After months of more drilling (and more drilling)…. we were finally ready to lift again….. once again a large entourage assembled, but this time we had something to show as we lifted significantly. We focused on the southwest corner and moved around to various places. Soon we have that corner of the building dubbed phase 1 lifted to full height, all the panels lining up, all the 8” wide joints closing in both directions, and looking like it should…. back up 15 ½” . It was really weird to see the footings up higher than the interior slab. A person could crawl under the footing from the inside to the outside! The front sidewalk entry was once flat now a ramp so steep it was hard to walk up.
I have lifted buildings this heavy before, and I have lifted up buildings much higher than this, but never this heavy AND this high.
As we lifted the higher distances, I started to notice that the brackets now were sitting up 15-20 inches off of the ground. This had the effect of creating a very slender element (the pile and sleeve) that was super sensitive to eccentric moments and started to deflect. This was a particular problem at the man doors along the docks where we were forced to drill 4” off the footing edge. The main doors were too small to poke our rig out from the inside. I have lifted buildings this heavy before, and I have lifted up buildings much higher than this, but never this heavy AND this high….. so this was uncharted territory and a learning experience.
We solved this problem with horizontal bracings with adjustable lengths and a large base plate pushing against the soil. We V cut the other end to secure it to the vertical pile.
Eventually, we decided that along the dock areas with the deeper footings (and much more weight on top of the inside footing) required some piles on the inside especially in the areas where the fire risers were. This area was really wet exacerbating the pile eccentricity problem as the upper section of the pile was surrounded by weak soil.
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