Hotel Avia is located in Long Beach about 2 blocks from the water. The soil is sandy, becoming very dense about 40 feet below existing grade. The original design for this project included 24-inch CIDH piles 60 feet deep. We offered a value engineering design using displacement piles that saved about $1.5 million.

The piles required design loads of 210 kips in tension and compression, 30 kips lateral, with testing to 2.5 times design load. We submitted a design using a 45-foot long, 16-inch displacement pile with a #20 Grade 75 KSI steel bar full-length and a 15-foot long cage utilizing four (4) #6 vertical bars. We installed all foundation piles using a BG-28 drill rig equipped with a computer that monitored torque, crowd, concrete pressure, time, depth, and penetration resistance. All 217 piles were installed with very few problems.