Cost or Driving Bearing Piles

COST or DRIVING BEARING PILES. There are a number of items which materially affect the cost of pile driving, which it is impossible to include in a brief summary, but which must not be forgotten in using such data in making estimates. Among these items are: the closeness to the driver of the place of delivery of the piles, the facilities for handling the piles, the length of the piles, the hardness of the driving, the accuracy of the required position of the pile, the number driven, the distance apart, etc.

Railroad Construction.

The following is a summary of the cost, to the contractor, of labor in driving piles (exclusive of hauling) in the construction of the Chicago branch of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe R. R. The piles were driven, ahead of the track, with a horse-power drop-hammer weighing 2,200 pounds. The average depth driven was 13 feet. The table includes the cost of driving piles for abutments for Howe truss bridges and for the false work for the erection of the same. These two items add con siderably to the average cost. The contractor received the same price for all classes of work. The work was as varied as such jobs usually are, piles being driven in all kinds of soil. Owing to the large amount of railroad work in progress in 1887, the cost of material and labor was about 10 per cent higher than the average of the year before and after. Cost of labor on pile-driver: 1 foreman at $4 per day, 6 laborers at $2, 2 teams at $3.50; total cost of labor = $23 per day.

Bridge Repairs. In

Table 62 are the data of pile driving for repairs to bridges on the Indianapolis, Decatur and Springfield R. R. The work was done from December 21, 1885, to January 5, 1886. The piles varied from 12 to 32 feet in length, the average being a little over 21 feet. The average distance driven was about 10 feet. The hammer weighed 1,650 pounds; the last fall was 37 feet, and the corresponding penetration did not exceed 2 inches. The hammer was raised by a rope attached to the draw-bar of a locomotive—comparatively a very expensive way.

On the same road, 9 piles, each 20 feet long, were driven 9 feet, for bumping-posts, with a 1,650-pound hammer dropping 17 feet. The hammer was raised with an ordinary crab-winch and single line, with double crank worked by four men. The cost for labor was 8.3 cents per foot of pile, and the total expense was 21.8 cents per foot.

Bridge Construction.

Table 63 gives the cost of labor in driving the piles for the Northern Pacific R. R. bridge over the Red River, at Grand Forks, N. Dakota, constructed in 1887. The soil was sand and clay. The penetration under a 2,250-pound hammer falling 30 feet was from 2 to 4 inches. The foreman re ceived $5 per day, the stationary engineer $3.50, and laborers $2.

On the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad in 1902 the cost of driving piles on sixteen jobs ranged between 10.7 and 2.4 cents per ft., the average being 4.4 cents. There were 436 piles driven, the average number per job being 27. The shortest pile was 14 ft., and the longest was 42 ft., the average being 24.2 ft. The greatest number in any one job was 74 and the smallest 8. The pile-driver was self-propelling. All the men with driver were com mon laborers except the foreman, the engineman, and the fireman. The engineman received $2.50 per day, and the fireman $1.50.* Foundation Piles. The contract price for the foundation piles—white oak—for the railroad bridge over the Missouri River, at Sibley, Mo., was 22 cents per foot for the piles and 28 cents per foot for driving and sawing off below water. They were 50 feet long, and were driven in sand and gravel, in a coffer-dam 16 feet deep, by a drop-hammer weighing 3,203 pounds, falling 36 feet. The hammer was raised by steam power.

The average cost of excavation and driving piles for bridge abutments in connection with track elevation in Chicago by a rail road for the year 1907, is as follows: For similar data for the same road for retaining walls, see Table 79, page 533.