HYDRAULIC PILING VIBRATOR

[hartlepoolmonkey]

I suppose, as this piece of machinery is in the sea, it qualifies for the North East Maritime site. As I could see this, across the bay from Hartlepool to Seaton Carew, I just had to go to take a photograph and find out exactly what it was and what is was doing.

Thanks to Ken Smith, of Watson & Hillhouse, he explains:

Our equipment is a hydraulic piling vibrator being used to drive timber piles into the sea-bed. The timber are piles, are as I understand, for supporting an outfall pipe that is being extended and also some of the older failed piles are being replaced for new ones. The vibrator clamps onto the timber pile and can both drive and extract by means of vibration.

Our equipment is on hire to Southbay Civil Engineering who are the subcontractor carrying out the work. The jack-up rig as you can see carries the crawler crane and all the equipment necessary, which was all loaded onto it in Hartlepool Docks and towed out to the site, where it is jacked up/down as required to the correct position.