We knew we needed piles, so the build team set about constructing the pile cages to put into the bored holes. With those bored holes being round, the obvious cage was cylindrical. K.pot used spiral steel at the correct diameter then tied the vertical rebar to that spiral to form a metal tube shaped cage – very clever!
It was amazing the speed at which the build team turned out the cages, but I guess they have been doing this work for a long time so it came naturally.
The finished cages were stacked up around the plot ready to be installed once the bore hole was finished.
What depth were your piles sunk to and what distance were they apart for the external and internal walls?
What width are the finished pillars? I am in the process of designing a similar-sized house and have worked on a 4m distance between pillars and pillars of 300mm width.
Typos corrected!
You are not far away with your pile grid spacings or pile X-sectional size. I will have to dig out my original plans to check for sure. I will email you if it is totally different!
With regards to piling…the first question is…do you need it? if you are building a single storey dwelling and the ground is solid, maybe you dont (plenty of single storey houses have been built in THailand with no piling at all, just spot foundations.
Secondly, need to check if your local OrBorTor engineer is requesting piling. he knows the ground where you plan to build, and if hes taking an interest…thats a good thing.
Thirdly – what are piles even for , anyway? lol to give a solid base to build the house up from. this works in two ways. frictional forces down the length of the pile and bearing forces when the pile meets some solid stable ground under your site. we bored and cast our piles which gives slightly less frictional effect. driven piles will give more, but we were interested to get down to the solid strata under our softer soils on the upper levels. We cast a total of 51 pilesand the depths varied from 4m to 7.8M, before hitting the solid layer. average was around 5.5m.
We were lucky that our builder had a boring rig, and he used ingenious spiral pile cages in each bore, then just cast each pile. concrete was vibrated every time to eliminate air pockets.
Hope this helps!
TD