Recent content by PileLabProject

No worries — definitely not remortgaging anything. The whole point is to keep the first prototype and testing stage cheap and let the results decide how far it goes.

Yes, improving the cardboard tube setup is one possible direction. But the flexible sleeve concept is not only about forming the enlarged base in one piece. The other advantages I’m trying to achieve are compactness, portability and potentially lower total cost. The whole system is designed to...

That may well be true for the UK, and I’m not trying to force the concept into a market where the construction method itself is uncommon. The real question for me is whether, in places where this type of pier foundation is used more often, the system makes the work simpler or faster for...

Fair enough — it’s definitely a niche problem, not something every DIYer will ever need. I’m not assuming a mass market at this stage. I’m just trying to find out whether the people who do need this kind of foundation would find a simpler system useful. That’s what the testing and feedback are for.

I understand your point. I’m not trying to prove at this stage that the sleeve is better than cardboard in every respect. The reason I’m exploring it is that it allows the shaft and enlarged base to be formed as one continuous stay-in-place element, while the support controls height and...

Not quite — the system isn’t designed around a cardboard tube at all. It uses its own flexible stay-in-place sleeve with an enlarged base. The support is adjusted to the required finished pier height, and the sleeve is set to match that depth/height. So no cardboard tube is needed. The dense...

That’s fair, but for a DIY user the economics may work differently. They don’t necessarily need enough supports to pour every pier at once — they could do the foundation in two or three pours and use fewer supports. The other point is cost. Based on my current estimate, the retail price of this...

Yes, that’s correct — if several piers are being poured at the same time, each one would need its own support. Whether that is economically reasonable depends heavily on the final price. My current estimate still needs to be confirmed by the printed prototype and real testing. If the target cost...

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Yes, each pier can be adjusted independently in height. My current concept is for the flexible sleeve itself to be available up to about 10 ft long, depending on the required hole depth. The support system has roughly 3 ft of height adjustment. I’m currently...

This system wasn’t really designed for professionals in the first place. I’ve poured a lot of concrete piers myself in different ways, so most of these operations always felt routine to me. The idea only came to me after I watched a friend with no construction background struggle with the same...

I think I didn’t explain the sequence clearly enough. There is no separate concrete base poured first. The idea is: dig the hole, place the tripod over it, level it, then attach the flexible stay-in-place sleeve. The sleeve is closed at the bottom and has an enlarged section at the base, so it...

Following the discussion here, I’ve taken the idea a little further and made the first CAD model. One important point that wasn’t clear in my original post: this is not intended to support Sonotube or another rigid form. The concept is a system of two parts: a cheap flexible stay-in-place...

Sure, if accuracy and the foundation detail aren’t particularly important, digging a hole and filling it with concrete is obviously simpler and cheaper. But the foundation sets the geometry for everything that follows — walls, posts, beams and ultimately the roof — so sometimes height, position...

I agree — for someone experienced, none of those individual steps are particularly difficult. I’ve done the same myself. The interesting part for me is how much time all those simple operations add up to when you have a lot of piers. And what feels routine to an experienced builder can be a much...