What kind of pilings?

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Q. We’re in the middle of a dispute about how our house was repaired and what to do to fix the foundation. We had an engineer and an architect look at the problem. Before that a contractor put in big, concrete, cube-like foundations under the large beams in our crawl space and tore out our slab and put in a new one. He said it would stop bad settling problems that have plagued us, but our floors and walls are still separating. There are cracks in the crawl space slab after only a year, and spaces between the walls and floors in all the rooms in the center of the house that are getting worse. We live on a canal. Our engineer ordered a soil boring report that shows we need piles, and we don’t have any. How reliable are those helical piles made of steel, especially near saltwater? My husband, who’s very practical, doesn’t think they’ll last. Should we use them, and is there an alternative?

A. Your husband is right to be suspicious of stainless steel piles, although the other choices — concrete-filled tubes, fiberglass or wood — won’t work in tight spaces without removing the house. Stainless steel piles are installed using a portable motor on a tripod in tight spaces. Interlocking 5-foot sections are added as the screw-like piles are torqued down into the earth.

The jury is still out on the use of stainless steel near saltwater, but, fortunately for you, I researched this issue and learned some interesting facts. Stainless steel piles have an average 37-year lifespan. By contrast, Venice, Italy, is supported on wood piles that have lasted 400 years. On top of that, this spring I’ll have the ability to make a better observation, as a client removes piles installed a year before the storm and reinstalls them in different places to accommodate the new structure needed to raise the house. The company that installed them will actually unscrew them out of the earth, and I’ll be there to check the steel’s condition, next to a saltwater canal.

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