Shoring and foundation work begins!

Its been a few months since our last construction update as we've been waiting for permits from the D.O.B. and then for the holidays to pass to get the ball rolling on the foundation work. (Apparently, in NYC, you need to use an Italian carting company to remove waste spoil from foundation work and they don't work on holidays!)

As of this week, the ball is officially rolling and we are now putting the beginnings of the foundation in below street level. Holly and I walked by early on Monday morning and saw that the equipment was already in place to start work:

Drill and pile driver in place to start foundation work.

I've been really busy writing up my thesis so I haven't had a chance to go by the site for more pictures but Yiannes has sent me the following images to keep us up to date. 

The first step of the foundation work is to shore up the edges of the site by building soil retention walls around the building's future footprint. This will prevent soil from caving in from the neighboring lots as we dig down to put the foundation and substructure in. This is done by driving piles down into the soil at regular intervals and then adding wood planks between the pilings to form a wall.

The process begins by drilling a hole for the piling:

Drilling a hole for the shoring piling

The drill then converts into a pile driver:

Pile driver drives a 20' pile in.

The first pile is in, with a few feet left above.

First 20' pile is in!

 Yiannes models with the wrench that is used to add drill bit sections:

Yiannes and a big ass wrench.

Progress should be happening very quickly over the next few months and we will try to keep up with blog posts as frequently as possible. The next post will have more detail about the shoring and foundation process.