Supporting an Elevator with Helical Piers – Boston, MA

February 25, 2014

Construction Problem: A brownstone structure in Boston, Massachusetts houses a fraternity for MIT students. As part of the planned renovation work, a new elevator was to be built to comply with current safety regulations in the City. The back bay section of Boston contained poor fill soils and deep foundation support was required to support the elevator

Site access was extremely limited in that the work had to take place within a basement level of the building. The only entrance was through a door in the rear of the building. Headroom was limited to less than 10 feet as well.

Helical Piers: An initial load test was performed on one test pile. The testing load was applied through a manually activated jack and pile head movement was observed by Haley and Aldrich’s field engineer. The test pile successfully held the load with minimal movement.

After the testing was done, a total of 9 piles were advanced to approximately 26 feet deep. The project was successfully completed in 6 working days.