Equipment

Hub Foundation owns more than twenty small diameter drill rigs about half of which are dedicated to low headroom micropile installation. We have amassed a variety of drill rigs with different capabilities that we customize to meet the most challenging indoor and limited access projects. Whether we are in a cofferdam, under bracing, at the bottom of a parking garage, or in the bowels of an historic downtown Boston building, we can install micropiles.

Micropiles have been a growing segment of the foundation industry for decades. Their capacities compete with drilled shafts but their cost is much lower. In the past ten years we have focused our equipment purchases to accommodate this growing market. Our equipment suppliers include Soilmec, Casagrande, Comacchio, Klemm, Davey-Kent and Krupp. Each piece of equipment specializes in the installation of a particular element. We can drill long stroke high capacity micropiles to compete with the driven piles; hollow bar soil nails; low headroom high capacity micropiles; and tie backs in all configurations.

Some of Hub Foundation’s small diameter drilling equipment specializes in the installation of anchors. We own rigs with versatile kinematics, rotary percussion, automated duplex loading, all of which have stable masts and undercarriages. These allow us to drill at any angle in various conditions safely and efficiently.

Hub owns fifteen hydraulic kelly drilling rigs of varying weight classes and torques. We have five rigs that can handle over 8’ diameter tooling; our Liebherr LB 45 can handle a 14’ tool. Our mid-range rigs have those Goldilocks features that are just right for big holes on tight urban sites with lower mobilization costs and smaller footprints. We have four easily mobilized drill rigs to accommodate smaller projects. Recent models have lighter weight and higher strength masts that can carry much bigger rotaries and winches for performance specs that were associated with the higher weight machines of decades ago.

The deep foundation industry requires specialized cranes. Hub has invested in the lifting rigs nearly as heavily as the drilling equipment. The Liebherr and Bauer cranes are duty cycle cranes with extra thick booms and heavier undercarriages to withstand the pounding of the digging or driving process. Our fleet includes:

• Liebherr 895 220T Crane
•  Bauer MC 96 Crane
• 160T Kobelco Crane
• Liebherr 855 Cranes
• Three 70T Mantis Cranes

In recent years Hub has acquired a full array of diaphragm wall equipment to venture into slurry walls. Boston has ideal conditions for slurry wall construction and we were well situated to advance into the arena. These investments allows us to provide the full spectrum of deep foundation applications for our clients and increases the availability of slurry wall equipment in the local market:

• Bauer BC 35 diaphragm cutter
• Bauer end-stops
• Bauer hydraulic grab
• Four Leffer mechanical grabs
• MAT desanding system and slurry pumps

In order to efficiently and safely conduct our work we own hundreds of pieces of support equipment. From air compressors to generators, grout plants and pumps, read on to learn more about some of our specialty support equipment.

Hub has a variety of vibratory hammers outfitted with jaw assemblies to clamp and install casing for drilled shaft work. We also have a selection of smaller hammers for work in low headroom and tighter earth retention applications. Our hammers include:

• Ape King Kong 400
• APE VM 250
• ICE 416
• ICE 812
• Dawson EMV-300
• HMC SP 50

Some projects require us to handle our own spoils and Hub has an array of excavators and loaders to fit the needs of each site condition. We have rubber-tired excavators for road work and rail-mounted excavators for railway projects. Our micropile work has led us to invest in Mecalac’s multifunction carriers.

Hub has its own fleet of equipment to support drilling operations in low headroom conditions. We also have a Magni telehandler to support unlimited headroom jobs.

• Magni RTH5.265
• JCB 504-13
• JCB Teleskid 3TS-8T
• Nissan Fork Trucks

Hub recently purchased three Klemm HBR 122 manipulators to feed drill steel and casing to our drill rigs. We employ these when jobsite conditions allow.

We purchased out slurry wall spoil handling system from Bauer. It allows us to process the 400 cubic meters of slurry per hour the cutter churns out. Our micropile operations create wet spoils, especially in Boston’s blue clay. We have designed and fabricated complete pumping and collection systems to allow us to drill in confined urban sites thus reducing the impact of spoils and mud. The soil separation system processes the drill spoil more readily for trucking. The core of these soil separation systems are Derrick Hyperpools and Centrifuges.