How each one goes in
A bored concrete pile means digging or drilling a hole, carting away the spoil, setting the reinforcing or a timber pile, pouring concrete and waiting for it to cure.
A screw pile is screwed in by a small rig and cut to level. There's no hole, no spoil and nothing to cure.
Time
Concrete needs time to cure before you load it, and wet weather often adds more: holes fill with water, trucks can't get on site, and pours get put off. Screw piles carry load as soon as they're in, so framing can often start the same day.
Mess and access
There's no spoil to barrow out, no concrete truck or pump in the driveway, and no wrecked lawn. Our compact rig gets through a side gate, and hand-held drive heads reach spots even the small rig can't.
Knowing what you got
Once a concrete pile is poured, what's in the hole is mostly out of sight. With screw piles, the installation torque of every pile is measured and recorded, which gives the engineer a pile-by-pile check against the design.
Cost
It depends on the site. On soft, wet, sloping or tight sites, screw piles often come out ahead once you count the digging, the spoil, the concrete delivery and the days lost to weather. On firm, flat, open sites, concrete can still be cheaper. We'll tell you honestly which suits yours.
Later on
Screw piles unscrew the way they went in, so a relocatable home, a cabin or a temporary building can move without leaving concrete behind. Concrete piles stay in the ground for good.
When concrete is the better call
Screw piles aren't right for every job. Concrete can suit better when:
- solid rock or large boulders sit close to the surface
- the loads are very heavy and the ground is firm and shallow
- the site is flat, open and easy to dig, and time isn't pressing