Record Piling Begins On The Pinnacle

Construction work is continuing on the Pinnacle, a planned 288 metre tall skyscraper in London, with some of the largest piles ever used in the United Kingdom.

Work on site is being managed by Brookfield, the latest reincarnation of Multiplex who built Wembley Stadium, although the actual piling is being carried out by the wonderfully named Bachy Soletanche.

The scale of the piles is enormous with the interior sizes up to 2.4 metres in diameter, comfortably enough for a man to stand in and sufficient to contain 229.16 cubic metres of concrete.

These will be sunk to a depth of 48.5 metres below sea level, or 65.5 metres below the ground level of the site setting a new record for foundation depth in London. It also goes to show that the developer is deadly serious about building a huge tower here, something that should be reinforced by the fact the construction team is working up to 16 hours a day on site.

The current record holder is Moorhouse with foundations 57 metres deep, and these were only built to that depth in 2002 to allow Crossrail to eventually pass under it.

Whilst piling is ongoing in April, the demolition contractor Keltbray will continue to prepare the site for full construction with work that will see the basement walls retained to allow them to break up ground floor and basement slab of the previous building, Crosby Court.

Piling will continue until it is finished in June but Crosby Court's demolition has some way to go yet and will buy the Museum of London Archaeology enough time to spend much of May and June nosing around the site seeing if they can find anything of interest.