Capabilities · Auger Cast Piles
Auger Cast Piles
A continuous flight auger is drilled to depth and grout is pumped through the stem as it withdraws. The soil is never left unsupported, which is why the method suits saturated Florida sand.
Send the geotechnical report and the site plan. You get a written read on the water, the excavation and the risk.
Self-perform
Dewatering and support of excavation, in house
Tidal
Deep foundations in tidal environments
Licensed
General contractor, licensed in the state of Florida
Water
The variable that decides the schedule in Florida
The pile you cannot inspect
The pile is formed underground and nobody ever sees it. Quality lives entirely in the pour: maintaining grout pressure so the shaft never necks, withdrawing at the right rate, and recording volume against depth for every pile. Get that wrong and you have a defect you cannot see and did not know you bought.
What makes them suitable here
- Low vibration and low noise, so they suit occupied urban sites.
- The auger supports the bore, which matters in saturated sand.
- Fast production once set up.
- No casing to handle, so a smaller site footprint.
- Automated monitoring gives a record for every pile.
How we handle it
- 01Confirm the soil profile suits CFA rather than a driven or drilled alternative.
- 02Design capacity from the borings and, where warranted, a test pile.
- 03Automated monitoring of grout volume and pressure against depth, per pile.
- 04Reinforcement placed to the specified depth — a real constraint of the method.
- 05Integrity testing on completed piles.
- 06Records handed over pile by pile.
Ask any contractor for the pile-by-pile monitoring records. On a properly run job they exist for every pile and are unremarkable to produce. If they cannot be produced, the piles were installed on trust, which is not a thing you can retrofit.
Said plainly
Where we stop
Reinforcement depth is limited by what can be placed into wet grout. Where the design needs full-length steel, CFA may not be the method, and we will say so rather than compromise the cage.
FAQ
Common questions
- How do you know the pile is sound?
- Grout volume against depth for every pile, plus integrity testing afterwards. Ask for the records.
- Are they quiet?
- Much quieter than driven piles, which is often why they are chosen on an occupied site.
- How deep can reinforcement go?
- Limited by placing the cage into wet grout. If the design needs full depth, that may rule the method out.
- Do they work in Florida sand?
- Well — the auger supports the bore, which is the problem saturated sand creates for other methods.
Ground conditions
Saturated Sand
The most common condition across coastal Florida: clean permeable sand with the water table a few feet down. It excavates easily and it will not stand up wet.
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Coquina & Cap Rock
Cemented shell and limestone layers turn up across Florida at unpredictable depths, and they are the reason a method chosen from experience rather than borings goes wrong.
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Organic Muck & Peat
Organic soils turn up across inland and former wetland Florida. They compress under load, keep compressing for years, and cannot be improved by compaction.
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Tidal & Waterfront Sites
Near the Intracoastal and the coast, the groundwater is tidally connected. It rises and falls twice a day, and a dewatering system designed for a static table will fail on the flood.
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Karst & Sinkhole Risk
Much of central Florida sits on limestone that groundwater has dissolved over time, leaving voids and raveling zones. It is the one condition where the investigation matters more than the design.
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Uncontrolled Fill
Older Florida sites are frequently built on fill placed decades ago with no compaction record and no control over what went in. It may be excellent or it may contain a buried structure.
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More capabilities
Construction Dewatering
In most of coastal Florida the groundwater sits a few feet below grade. Any excavation deeper than that is an excavation in water until something is done about it, and what gets done determines the program.
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Support of Excavation
Support of excavation is the system that keeps the hole open and keeps the ground next to it from moving. On a tight urban site it is the whole job.
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Sheet Piling
Interlocking steel sheets driven or vibrated into the ground, giving retention and a groundwater cut-off in one system. In saturated Florida sand that combination is often exactly what the job needs.
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Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.