Start of Drilling
Drilling for the future parking garage will begin this week. This will entail a large drilling rig onsite to create holes every 8 feet around the perimeter of the site. After the holes are drilled, steel I-beams, also called soldier piles, are dropped into the holes and large plywood sheets are attached to the soldier piles which supports the surcharge loads from the adjacent soil from caving in. All this work is also observed and noted by independent third party inspectors and reports are sent immediately to the City’s construction department, for monitoring. This soil retaining system is called a “shoring system”. See the photo below for what the shoring system looks like.
The shoring system is installed in what is called “lifts” meaning that each section is excavated about 8-10 feet and stabilized before the next 10 feet are excavated, until the excavation reaches the bottom of the lowest level of the parking garage, which we call P2 (parking level 2)
Example of shoring