Enabling rainwater drainage through pile driving technology

If rain­wa­ter can’t drain prop­er­ly, it’s a prob­lem for the build­ing that sits on top of it. Drainage pre­vents excess water from seep­ing into the prop­er­ty and caus­ing dam­age to the build­ing. With trench­less tech­nol­o­gy, this can be done in a par­tic­u­lar­ly envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, fast and cost-effec­tive man­ner, as the fol­low­ing exam­ple shows.

A GRUNDORAM pipe pile dri­ver, type Mini-Olymp was used on a con­struc­tion site in Der­byshire to ram a 325 mm thick steel pipe under the con­crete foun­da­tion of a new pro­duc­tion plant. The steel pipe was nec­es­sary to accom­mo­date a 225 mm HDPE pipe that drains rain­wa­ter from the gut­ter down­spouts of the new building.

The project is the first ever devel­op­ment in the UK for the Ger­man soft drinks man­u­fac­tur­er, MEG GmbH, which is part of the Schwarz Group and also part of the Lidl super­mar­ket chain.  The huge 50,168 sq m (540,000 ft²) plant, due to open in 2022, is locat­ed in the Dove Val­ley Indus­tri­al Estate in Fos­ton on land pre­vi­ous­ly used for agri­cul­ture. Deep drilling pri­or to site devel­op­ment has proven high-qual­i­ty water sources to sup­ply the plant. Once con­struc­tion is com­plete, the plant will process, bot­tle and dis­trib­ute min­er­al water and soft drinks for the entire Lidl super­mar­ket chain in the UK and Ireland.

GMI Con­struc­tion Group, an estab­lished Leeds-based con­struc­tion com­pa­ny, was appoint­ed gen­er­al con­trac­tor for the site and worked with civ­il engi­neer Rook Ser­vices and machin­ery rental com­pa­ny R.O. Don­aghey to car­ry out all ground engi­neer­ing works. The foun­da­tions were laid after the soil had been drained, sta­bi­lized and com­pact­ed — this sub­se­quent­ly required an extreme­ly effi­cient solu­tion for the instal­la­tion of the steel pipe. Because the Rook Ser­vices team had pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with trench­less tech­nol­o­gy, they were able to rec­om­mend pipe ram­ming as the fastest, safest and most cost-effec­tive solu­tion to install the drainage under the foun­da­tions. Since they were already a cus­tomer, they asked the tech­ni­cians there for advice.

The Mini Olym­pus, with a length of 1080 mm, 180 mm width and 720 Nm impact force, was pro­posed for the job and deliv­ered to the site by the expe­ri­enced team at Rook Ser­vices. The pile dri­ver was placed at a depth of 400 mm from the apex of the pipe to the bot­tom of the foun­da­tion, and pile dri­ving for the instal­la­tion took a total of just 55 min­utes over a length of 6 m. A hard foam pig was shot through the cas­ing with com­pressed air to remove debris after instal­la­tion, allow­ing the HDPE pipe to be pulled through with ease.

“I knew I could rely on the team and once again the com­pa­ny han­dled every­thing fab­u­lous­ly. A GRUNDORAM was deliv­ered to the site and the job was done quick­ly and effi­cient­ly. TRAC­TO’s prod­ucts are always very reli­able and effi­cient, so we were able to meet our schedule.”

- Nick Richards