Micro Piling for new Dublin hotel
Leading geotechnical specialist Bachy Soletanche has recently completed its latest Irish contract, providing micro piling to support the basement construction of the new Joels Hotel complex on the Naas Road, Dublin 22. The work was coordinated through Bachy Soletanche’s Ireland office, opened in September last year, and involved the construction of over three hundred mini-piles during a two month programme that began in December.
The piling contract was worth over £200,000 and involved the construction of contiguous micro-pile walls, reinforced with CHS tubes and raking anchors with a diameter of 178mm, and a depth of up to 7.5m. The two-month programme remained on schedule, although the limestone rock contours caused the Bachy Soletanche design team to undertake a redesign of the project before Christmas.
Ged Neary, General Manager for Ireland at Bachy Soletanche commented:
“In this area of Dublin we expected the rock to be completely fractured for the basement depth, but it was more intact and higher than we had initially anticipated. However, we were able to create a new design very quickly that took the rock into account, and we were able to complete the project on-programme.”
The micro-piles constructed by Bachy Soletanche are being used to allow the construction of permanent retaining walls for the hotel’s 2-storey underground car park being built under the management of main contractor John Paul Construction. Bachy Soletanche used 2 Casagrande mini-piling rigs for the project, with specialist down-the-hole hammers utilised to drill up to 20 piles per day into the strong limestone rock that underlies the site.