Nick (picaso) Comstock wrote: In reply to Keith Tanner: Ah, East TN, the land of zero codes and zero code enforcement and my uncle built a barn once, I'll get him to build my house. "Yeah, sure we can do a two story. No, no, no 2X6 joists on 24" centers will be more than enough"
There used to be a regulatory document called the Southern Building Code. Us Yankees always referred to it as the Outhouse Code. Basically anything that wouldn't spontaneously combust met the SBC requirements.
You learn the most interesting stuff on this forum...
Nick (picaso) Comstock wrote: I was driving pilings in Bristol TN. once. I was about 60' deep with the first piling and broke through the top of a cave, the ten feet I had sticking out of the ground disappeared in an instant. Craziest thing I've seen. That area was a nightmare though, we would average 120' on a project and a half mile away we would average 10'. Made predicting how much material to bring with us a challenge.
The bank on the corner of State and Volunteer Parkway? I grew up in Bristol and remember a story of that happening there. Great place for caving.
Scott_H wrote: Alfadriver - This is completely unrelated. Have you ever eaten at Giovanni's just south from you? It is easily the best Italian restaurant I have ever been to. The lady that owns it is probably 75 years old and has a million stories.
No, I wasn't even aware of it. Where is it?
alfadriver wrote:Scott_H wrote: Alfadriver - This is completely unrelated. Have you ever eaten at Giovanni's just south from you? It is easily the best Italian restaurant I have ever been to. The lady that owns it is probably 75 years old and has a million stories.No, I wasn't even aware of it. Where is it?
330 Oakwood, Detroit, MI 48217
I end up in the Detroit area every once in a while and always find a way to have dinner there. I'll be there in a couple weeks and will do the same.
My last time there the owner was telling me this one:
She had decided to close the restaurant on a Saturday for a special birthday party that they wanted to have there. It was for Mrs. Ford, Bill's mom. IIRC she said it was her 75th. She was telling me how the field across the street had not been mowed in a long time and looked like (crap). She had tried to get the city to mow it (it's their property) and got no where. she called the mayor who didn't call her back. On the Friday before the birthday party the mayor was there for lunch and she told him off. Explained why it needed to be mowed, blah, blah, blah. Saturday morning there was a crew out there cleaning it all up. She is a legend.
When you go, get the lasagna. It is something like 16 layers with the pasta very thin. Nothing like you have ever had. It is one of the very few restaurants that carry Pappy Van Winkle bourbon.
sorry for the hijack
Geotechnical Engineer here. I would say a lot about friction/end bearing, but it's already been said by others.
The "preliminary drilling" you saw sometime back is the geotechnical exploration. Being out a small capacity rig and drill test borings with a hollow auger then inserting and driving a 2" pipe 18 inches by a 140lb weight falling 30-inches referred to as the standard penetration test (SPT). Half the world is built on a 2 inch pipe being jammed into the dirt and the blows/foot being correlated to a whole lot of parameters. Let that sink in.
There's a huge shortage of geotechnical engineers. We've had job postings up for years and can't find people. Great pay too. See article below:
The testing and math and correlation and factors of safety in geotechnical stuff is really cool. I spent some time talking to guys who were trying to establish relationships between cone penetrameter testing and other non-invasive geophysical stuff. Maybe I should update my learning a bit and prepare a resume. 
I want to be a geotechnical engineer simply so I can get a penetrameter.
In reply to Keith Tanner:
How's about a pocket penetrometer?
In reply to Scooter:
Sounds like we might work for competitors, although I am not an engineer. I've often said you can't swing a dead cat in the office without hitting a PE. One problem hiring geotechnical engineers, is that many don't want to get dirty. Most of our engineers are civil engineers, and as long as they don't like walking over briar, kudzu and poison ivy infested property, I will have a job.
Scooter wrote: In reply to Keith Tanner: How's about a pocket penetrometer?
I am such a child. Thank you.
spitfirebill wrote: It could be both, but probably friction.
This. I use them all the time when designing buildings. The civil engineer usual has a soils engineer that tells the engineer what they have to work with. If it is friction piles the length is directly related to the amount of weight it can carry. If it is bedrock well you just hit the rock with the pile and move on to the next one.
With friction piles they will test them with weight set on them for a set time period and then the measure for any movement.
How long is the set time, typically?
And what's the mechanism they use to test movement? Do they bring the pile driver back out and hammer it again, or some other mechanism?
Worked on a side project that was essentially a glorified stopwatch for calculating how much 'stick' the piles have based on the timing of the bangs when pile driving once. It was a pretty neat process.
Short version:
When using a pile driver like the above, you know how much energy is available assuming your fueling is consistent. You also know how much the pile driver weighs. For a given bang, the pile goes down and the piston goes up. Then the piston falls back down and goes bang again.
If you time the interval between bangs you get a pretty decent handle on not only how high the piston/driver went, but how far you sunk the pile. (again, assuming consistent fueling) Given a consistent amount of energy, how far you sink per hit is used to calculate stick.
We were running this on portable phones and tablets with mics. The data from our kludged together app wasn't good enough to certify anything, but it allowed the crews to get a lot closer before getting an inspector over, saving a decent amount of time and money for both the contractor and the county (doing the inspections).
I really thought this thread was going to be about lowering ford trucks...
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