Lake Michigan Pile Driving Featured

When you live on the bluffs overlooking the shores of Lake Michigan, retaining walls can be serious business. And when your next-door neighbor's ultra-modern house is made predominantly of glass, the concern about the potential for structural damage from pile driving for a new retaining wall can be even more serious.

Alan Levine, principal of Chicago-based The Lighthouse Companies and lead engineer overseeing the project, recommended the use of vibration monitoring equipment during the pile-driving phase of the project. "The need for vibration monitoring while driving piles for a new retaining wall not only mitigates my client's risk - it makes for good neighbor relations," he said.

Levine and his crew wanted to place a vibration monitoring device in the optimal location to read potential vibration impact. The challenge: poor cellular reception at the spot he needed the device to be placed. "Putting it anywhere else wouldn't give us the readings we needed," Levine said. "I needed a solution that could be placed where I needed it to be and had a flexible antenna option as well."

Levine selected Inzwa's Veva III vibration monitoring device and CLOUD management platform for the project. The Veva III's compact size, integrated battery and cellular service and the CLOUD's user-friendly interface made it possible for Levine's team to install, configure and activate the system in a matter of minutes. However, the ability to easily replace the standard antenna with one attached to over 50 feet of coaxial cable was the key to the Veva III's success on site.

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"Installing and configuring the system on the CLOUD platform was easy and fast," Levine said. "And having a flexible antenna option made Inzwa ideal for this vibration monitoring project," he concluded.

The Veva III was in place and monitoring continuously during the two-day pile driving phase of the project. Inzwa's CLOUD platform gave Levine accurate, real-time visibility of the monitor's readings from any screen he needed - desktop, tablet or smartphone.

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"I could see clear rises in vibration levels with each pile being driven," Levine said. "PPV (peak particle velocity) levels remained well below the parameters of the project, which gave us all peace of mind that the home's structural integrity was not compromised. And the data is captured for future use, should it be needed," he concluded.