Retaining Walls
Cannon Piling are a specialist contractor, with the capability to install a wide range of retaining walls. From walls based on bored piling such as secant pile walls and contiguous pile walls, to more conventional retaining methods such as sheet piling and king post walls, Cannon Piling design and deliver operational excellence in retaining solutions.
Why might you need a retaining wall?
Retaining walls are structures designed to restrain soil to a slope that would not remain stable unassisted. They are used to bound soils between two different elevations often in areas of terrain possessing undesirable slopes or in areas where the landscape needs to be shaped severely and engineered for more specific purposes like hillside farming or roadway overpasses. Working in the energy, commercial, infrastructure, maritime, marine, residential, and rail market sectors, our experts in retaining solutions work to tailor solutions to your site, backed by our in-house design and technical engineers.
Contiguous Pile Walls
Contiguous pile walls are constructed with nominal gaps between adjacent piles and are mainly installed using suitable piling techniques. Ideal in crowded urban areas, where alternative retaining methods would not be applicable and where development space is limited. The gap between each pile is typically 150mm and can be constructed to provide load bearing capacity. They are ideal when groundwater ingress is not an issue for the finished wall. Cannon Piling are a specialist contiguous pile wall contractor.
Secant Pile Walls
Secant Pile Walls are formed by constructing intersecting reinforced concrete piles. The secant piles are reinforced with either steel rebar or with steel beams and are constructed by augering. Primary piles are installed first with secondary piles constructed in between primary piles once the latter gain sufficient strength. Pile overlap is typically in the order of 80 mm. They are constructed when resistance to groundwater is required using the CFA technique or the cased CFA technology.
Sheet Piling
In conjunction with Aarsleff Ground Engineering, we can install a wide range of permanent and temporary sheet piling solutions. Permanent retaining walls utilising sheet piles are used on schemes large and small, from simple projects to complex slope stabilisation solutions. They offer cost-effective alternatives to contiguous and secant piled walls. They may be designed to both retain temporary excavations and to act as the permanent retaining structure, often in conjunction with the base slab which offers propping to the wall. Sheet pile walls are commonly used in service yards of commercial and retail sector developments, flood defence schemes, bridge abutments and boundary walls. This solution has distinct advantages over concrete contiguous and secant walls. Besides being cost-effective, they require no curing time before excavations can commence, thus allowing shorter programmes.
King Post Walls
King Posts are isolated steel columns that are installed along the line of the proposed retaining wall typically at centres between 1 and 3m. The space between the posts is filled, over the retained height, using a variety of different solutions but most commonly a precast concrete panel. The method involves drilling with a high powered CFA, large diameter or mini piling rig and then filling it with concrete and installating an H beam. This allows concrete prestressed panels to be inserted between the webs of the H sections, which after excavation results in the finished embedded retaining wall.
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