Piling works underway

The piling works are now well underway. This picture shows the steel supports that are being inserted into the ground. Each hole is half a metre in diameter and 9 metres in depth. That's about the same height as the main elevation of the hall. In total, around 300 tons of steel will be put into the ground to support the structure of the new glass wing.

The work is noisy, and, because of the clay soil base, very dusty. Our neighbours are being very patient so thank you. The piling work is due to stop at the end of next week.

Piling - a short introduction

The photograph shows the foundation layout for our (soon-to-be) fabulous, new glass wing. The contractor has cleared the paving away and this week will begin 'piling'. A lot of the construction industry language is new to me. I had a rough idea of what piling meant but a bit of investigation has thrown up lots of interesting information.

The basics: "A pile driver or piledriver is a mechanical device used to drive piles into soil to provide foundations support for buildings or other structures." It is likely to be very noisy, especially if it hits hard rock.

Some history: Scotland can make a very good claim to have invented the process. Among the people who are said to have invented piling is James Nasmyth, son of the Edinburgh born landscape painter Alexander Nasmyth. Even better, the earliest example of piling is a 5,000 year old, iron age Crannog, and is to be found at Loch Tay.

If you want to find out more, have a browse through these links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pile_driver

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Nasmyth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crannog