New-Build Folly on a Lake in Shrewsbury

The client

With over 20 years of experience and a reputation for quality and reliability, Shingler Construction is a family-owned and run construction contractor based in the heart of the Shropshire countryside.

They have expertise working across a wide range of industry sectors completing new building, renovation and conservation projects in licensed premises, commercial offices and residential developments.

The project

Being a leading construction firm covering such a wide range of sectors, it’s understandable Shingler was entrusted with this unusual project. A new stone folly on an island in the middle of a small lake isn’t something anyone comes across on a regular basis, and they needed a piling company to provide a quote and scope based on their structural design engineer’s drawings.

After finding us on Google, Rhino Piling was initially contacted about the project on 11^th February 2022, with our technical director Jonathan conducting a site visit a week later on the 18^th to investigate access options to the island, the material the island was made up of, and whether or not close-by trees could make piling difficult.

Access and Piling

Ultimately, access wasn’t an issue as the piling team of Sam and Harry simply carried one of our Grundomat 130s over one of the connecting bridges to the island, with the compressor staying on the other side.

As expected, the piles drove slowly due to tree roots. Nevertheless, all 10 150mm mini-piles achieved a set of between 3 – 4 metres within a day.

The unique spiral beam

The unique 263kg spiral steel beam was then transported to the site and placed in situ fully fabricated.

Unlike the linear cages we use on the vast majority of projects, we don’t have spiral ones like this stacked up and ready to go, so it needed pre-fabbing in advance.

Concrete

The concrete was pumped in by a line pump with a boom 2 days after the piling was completed. Due to the surrounding trees, the driver had to carefully manoeuvre his vehicle and boom arm into position; but as he’d already pumped concrete in for the bridges the year prior, he knew what to expect.

4 cubic metres of C35 concrete later and the folly was out of the ground!

Phone: 0161 706 0365 | Email: enquiries@rhinopiling.co.uk