American Bridge Pounds Some Plastic Piles In Virginia
Post Date: November 1, 2011 at 11:48 pm
Reported From: APE Mid-Atlantic (VA)
Reported From: APE Mid-Atlantic (VA)
When American Bridge was awarded the NOAA seawall project in beautiful downtown Norfolk Virginia it seemed like a cut & dry type job. Some pre demolition of the existing structure, install a new steel sheet pile wall and form & pour a cast in place concrete cap. There were some out of the ordinary composite “harbortech” Dolphin piles that had to be installed for the final phase of the marine construction.
Keith Hall, construction manager for American Bridge has driven thousands of piles of all types in his life time. These were somewhat different from what he’d dealt with in the. Keith contacted the Mid-Atlantic branch of APE to see what we could look at to install these piles.
APE has a line of “low-head room” impact hammers that were designed for very low head room applications. These are called the APE 7.5 series. The 7.5 stands for the height of the hammer 7-1/2 feet. Contractors have found out through the years these are the best tool for lowhead room applications, but also for standard jobs as well.
There are 3 versions of these and they are identified by a A, B, & C series. The 7.5A has the heavier ram, 12,000 lbs. of the 3 the 7.5C has the lightest ram 7.600 lbs. and it comes standard to fit in 21” leads. The “B” has a 10,200 lb. ram come standard to fit 26” leads.
Keith & Jimmy Deemer of APE Mid-Atlantic chose the smallest of the 3 for this application, the 7.5C Hydraulic Impact Hammer. We mated this with an APE small pipe pile insert and 60’ of 8” x 21” leads and this combination worked great! I don’t know how we would have done this without this APE hammer. These are not your ordinary dolphin piles said Keith Hall.
Contact your local APE branch for information on these 7.5 hammers, APE is the only ones in the piledriving industry that can offer these lowhead room hammers to you. They can be handled with an APE forklift sled or many other means of lift applications.
We wish Keith Hall & American Bridge a safe & productive project… GO APE!
APE 170VM Has Been Spotted in Los Cabos
Post Date: November 1, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Reported From: APE Mexico
Reported From: APE Mexico
A new APE 170VM has been spotted in Los Cabos, Mexico taking the sun and driving contention walls for a very exclusive new Marina called Cabo Rivera . GITSA purchased the latest Variable Moment Vibratory Hammer technology to drive 3800 concrete sheets of 12m length x 1m wide x 90 cm thickness to build the contention walls for the man-made-islands where the new Marina DreamHomes will be constructed. The APE 170VM with 2,250 in/lb of eccentric variable moment and our newly designed octakong inspired concrete sheet clamp takes concrete sheet driving to a new level. The newly designed APE concrete sheet clamp attachment covers more area, transmits more energy, and has better grip than the old 2 cylinder concrete sheet clamp. Not even one sheet broke or fractured! Very soft fine sands made the driving difficult, but nothing watter jetting and slow driving (1350 RPM) with high amplitude could not overcome. Gladly, the APE 170VM allowed us to control the speed and amplitude infinitely with the phase in/phase out feature, high/low turbo, and the governor features.
The additional training & support provided by our technician Daniel Parke helped increase the contrator’s and pilebuck’s confidence in the equipment and in 2 days they went from 3 sheets to 6-7 sheets per day. I am sure they will double their production ones they get more comfortable with the equipment. We look forward to working with GITSA in the near future.
