The site, in Piccadilly, York, will retain much of the older building, preserved as a site of historic interest. The facade of the former building is to be preserved, with the new hotel being constructed behind it. In addition, there are a number of walls dating back to Roman times.
For the highly sensitive construction of the new hotel complex, 350mm concrete piles were used. These required cropping to the correct size. Due to its location, the site itself was highly constricted and its historic nature required high levels of accuracy and sensitivity. Alwoodley called upon the services of National Pile Croppers. Following site visits to gain an understanding of the project requirements, the use of a Quad and a CFA pile cropper were advised.
The Quad croppers' design provides a very small footprint to enable access into tight spaces meaning that it can also be used to reduce contiguous and secant piled walls with spacing as close as 100mm. It uses four powerful and fully synchronised rams with specially designed blades to cut the pile, with the cropper also holding the cut pile section safely for removal to a designated safe area.
The Quad works by being lowered over the top of the pile to recommended height. The jaws of the cropper are then closed until the pile section pops free. The reinforcement bars can then be easily removed and recycled whilst the broken pile section can now be lifted to dumper or an identified safe area for processing.
The National Pile Cropper team has worked closely with Alwoodley to ensure that the pile cropping was undertaking safely, accurately and efficiently. Due to its experience in pile cropping, and despite the constrained inner city site location, the cropping of the 350mm piles has been undertaken at an impressive rate of 10-15 per day. National Pile Cropper experts are on hand throughout the project to assist with the cropping, including switching between the two types of cropper depending on the specific circumstances.
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