STELCOR Installation Versus An Auger Cast Pile
Phil Carlucci, owner of Philip Ross Industries, would not appreciate being referred to as a control freak. However, when it comes to his projects, he prefers to be in control of the work on the job as much as possible.
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Carlucci. “We work with a lot of excellent subcontractors, but the more of the work I can keep in-house, under our supervision, the better I like our chances of keeping the project on schedule and on budget.”
The Challenge
When auger cast piles were specified on a New York State job on Long Island and the project was repeatedly delayed pending permits and approvals, Carlucci started looking around for other pile options.
“It’s not the sub’s fault,” said Carlucci. “We had to be ready to go as soon as we got the go ahead and could not wait on a subcontractor’s schedule.”
The Solution
The Cedar Lake pump station needed to be supported on piles and they turned to Danbro Distributors with IDEAL’s STELCOR drilled in displacement piles and its full range of customer support services. Installing Stelcor from subgrade inside the cofferdam at elevation -12 is a tremendous time and money savings over the specified caisson that required installation from elevation 0. Besides not having to chop down the caisson from elevation 0 to -12, excavation inside the cofferdam was reduced from 5 days to one without any caissons in the way.
Furthermore, there are little to no spoils with a STELCOR pile compared to the mess created by the soil that is displaced using auger cast piles. In addition, Danbro provided a full range of services from value engineering to equipment to on-site supervision and training.
Phillip Ross Industries was able to install the 20 piles in two days. “We got eight piles in the first day but did 12 piles on day two. Four hundred feet of STELCOR in a single day is an excellent production rate,” said Nick Gill, Danbro’s on site trainer. “Hats off to the Ross crew. They caught on real fast.”
Carlucci said he preferred STELCOR to the auger cast piles. “It was cleaner with no spoils and we didn’t have to a wait for the concrete to cure before we moved on to a the next phase, because this step was unnecessary with STELCOR. The project cost was the same because PRI had to make the initial investment in the equipment to install the STELCOR piles.
“We will definitely amortize that expense as we now have another very viable option which allows our crew to put in the piles and control the schedule,” Carlucci said. “I also liked the fact that Danbro provided a total package: engineering, equipment, and Nick!”
