PILING

Drilling in a church

A Belgian church is the latest site where a KLEMM drill rig has been seen at work

 A KLEMM KR 801-3FS drill rig has been used to install micropiles in a Belgian church

A KLEMM KR 801-3FS drill rig has been used to install micropiles in a Belgian church

Before the restoration work could be carried out, the existing foundations of the church had to be extended in order to transfer the load of the church building to the lower layers of earth.

CVR nv, headquartered in Beringen, Belgium, has been using drill rigs from KLEMM Bohrtechnik for many years and for this project a KR 801-3FS drill rig from KLEMM was used to make micropiles and cement columns using the 1-phase jet grouting method.

The work, which needed to be performed in part under some very tight spatial constraints for example, along the existing foundations of the church, required a drill rig with compact dimensions. With its flexible and load-bearing boom for aligning the drill mast in a wide range of drilling gradients and distances in front of and to the side of the drill rig, the KLEMM KR 801-3FS was the choice for this job. The installed drill mast with lattice mast extensions permits drilling depths of down to 13m in single-pass operation. The drill rods are driven by a rotary head type KH 14SK, which is fitted with a hydraulic mandrill for drill rods up to a diameter of 114.3mm.

A total of 123 HPI piles with diameters of 70cm and 90cm and a length of 8.5m were drilled (of which 38 were 180° sector piles with a diameter of m) The load on the piles amounted to 560kN for 70cm diameter piles and 1,111kN for 90cm diameter piles.