Beginning Construction: Pilings in the ground at last!

Carefully watched over by a Chocolate Lab named Keya, a man named Duncan Aydlett and his crew have completed the job of putting our pilings in the ground. Duncan started Lightning Marine Construction in 1991, and his experience is obvious even to an unpracticed eye. ( see http://lightningmarine.com/) Vince and I went up to the site on Monday (7/14) and watched them put in three pilings in about an hour. I spoke to Duncan, who said that they had never put in pilings this deep before and that the work is really hard on the men. It was very hot out there with no wind behind the dune, so I know that’s true. For their sakes, I was glad that we are having days with highs in the 80’s and not the 90’s or worse. Duncan told me that the Chocolate Lab, Kaia, is his dog and that the name means “turtle” in an Indian language, though he didn’t say which. I have read that "Keya" means a lot of beautiful things in several languages, all having to do with the earth and beauty, so it’s a great name for a Lab. This dog was named Keya/turtle, because of the way he laid with his paws turned out like a swimming sea turtle as a puppy. Keya was clearly very much an old hand on the job site, patiently adjusting his position as the men moved the equipment, digging for cool spots in the sand, and finally taking a nap in the shade under the truck. I felt good about the work and the man, knowing that there was a Lab on site.

Duncan had Rick House’s well-used piling layout in his hand, and he and another one of the men marked off the spots where each piling should go. Since the holes are so deep, I wondered how they could possibly know how far into the sand to dig, but each post is marked at about 16’, 18’ and 22’, so they can read the depths from the top down. Steve, who operates the crane, is like the choreographer in a ballet, moving the boom and augur around the site as exactly as if it were his own arm and hand. First, he lowers the augur tip to the spot Duncan has measured and marked, digs down to first one level and then another, shaking the accumulated sand off the augur in between, like a wet animal without a towel. The augur is huge, making a clean round hole about 2 feet in diameter. When it comes up out of the hole caked with sand, it looks like a fat round man after eating too much at a big meal. After digging the hole, Steve then moves the boom over to grab one of the pilings from the stack. There is a big hook that is on a reel that allows the hook to be pulled farther from and then back towards the rig. Another worker takes the big hook and loops it into a piece of wire rope that is on the piling. The boom slowly lifts and drags the piling until it is erect over the hole, and then it is lowered in. Several of the men guide the piling as it sinks deeper and deeper into the ground. Judging from the marks on the piling, the augured holes are about 16 feet deep. The hole is deepened the last six or so feet by jetting an intense stream of water down into the hole as the men push the piling deeper and deeper until it reaches the 22 foot mark. This process is a muddy mess, and the water and wet sand are everywhere. The water comes from temporary shallow wells that are dug on site and stored in a tank called the mule. The strength of the jetted stream comes from the power of the pump. Finally, Duncan makes sure the piling is standing level, the men fill in the hole, and they do it all again. .. about 44 times.

When I went back up to the lot on Thursday (7/17), I found Duncan grilling hamburgers for the guys under a tarp. I met Steve’s little Yorkie, Rusty, who also spends his days at work, carefully tucked out of harm’s way in the truck and watched over by all the men on the site. The pilings are surely one of the most important elements of having a strong house, and I was glad to know that such a good crew did that work for us.

It seemed that getting the pilings started would take forever! Once Karl ordered the pilings, there was a problem between Kellogg’s (the lumber yard) and the piling source. When the order was corrected, there was an issue with getting the pilings treated, because the treatment facility was not equipped to handle the larger pilings. The piling treatment had to be outsourced to a commercial facility. Once they were finally delivered to Kellogg’s, a special truck was needed to get the pilings up to our lot, since they were too long for the typical delivery truck and too heavy to be carried in just one or two trips up the beach. Mark Thompson came to the rescue with his big 8-10 ton military truck, (he can haul ANYTHING!) and hauled them up there in a couple of trips. SO, the right pilings with the right treatment finally arrived on the lot on Monday, 7/14. Next, there had to be a piling inspection by the Currituck County Building Inspector to make sure there were no knots or other deformities that would make them too weak to support our house. Having passed the inspection, the first piling was installed on Wednesday afternoon. As of Friday evening, July 18, the last of the pilings were in the ground and tamped. Vince and I had planned to be there watching and toasting the event with champagne, but since it was so long past the time that we expected things to begin, neither of us could be there for the first ones. It was a moment that I truly wanted to see, especially since it was only a once in a lifetime occurrence!

Things became a bit more complicated because we made the decision to use very long pilings: 34 footers. The usual pilings are 24 feet long, with 8 feet off the ground and 16 feet in the ground, so ours had to be specially ordered. (That’s a BIG tree!) According to Vince, FEMA guidelines recommend that pilings for ocean front houses be 10 feet below MSL (mean sea level). Our lot has an elevation of 12 feet above MSL, so that adds up to 22 feet in the ground. We are putting the house nearly 11 feet above the sand, so that’s 33 feet of piling, with the extra foot allowed for leveling and some discrepancy in the depths. At our location on the beach, flood level is considered to be 12’ above MSL, so our grade is at flood level. The problem that arises during a high water event (translation: hurricane or nor’easter) is that when water flows onto the land from the sea, the wave action erodes the sand around the pilings and eventually causes the piling to lose its lateral support. Here in North Carolina, we call that process “wallering out,” as in “the hole got wallered out.” When the force of the wind then pushes on the weakened piling system, the house does what is called “racking,” leaning farther and farther until it falls over. The deeper pilings provide support that shouldn’t “waller out” with the depth and energy of the water that we expect in North Carolina, so there you go…longer pilings are important! A toppled over house is NOT a good thing! For the extra long pilings and the different facility for the treatment and the additional hauling, we paid about $5,000.00 more than if we had used the standard 24 foot pilings. Definitely a case of something worth its weight in gold.

Whew!