Concrete Core Drilling and Coring Through Piles

Core drilling

Most of our coring is services penetrations. Hydraulic risers, electrical, mechanical, fire, and the endless small holes a fitout needs. We also core for anchors, dowels, sampling and investigation.

What we can drill

• Diameters from 25mm through to 1000mm
• Depths beyond a metre using stitch drilling and extension barrels
• Any orientation. Down through slabs, horizontally through walls and lift shafts, and overhead into soffits
• Reinforced and post tensioned concrete, scanned and marked before we start
• Masonry, brick and stone as well as concrete

Bulk coring programs

If you have hundreds of penetrations across multiple levels, the risk is not the drilling. It is coordination. We sequence by level and by trade so the hydraulic contractor is not waiting on a hole that is four floors away, and we scan a full floor plate in one visit rather than turning up nine times.

Coring through piles

Piles and pile caps get cored more often than people expect. Starter bars and dowels that were missed or set out wrong, holding down bolts for steelwork, tie ins for a new capping beam, penetrations through a pile cap for services, and test cores where the engineer wants to see what is actually in the pile. All of it is coring through heavily reinforced, high strength concrete where a bent barrel or a cut bar is expensive.

What we core

• Vertical cores through pile heads for anchors, dowels and starter bars, set out from the survey marks
• Horizontal cores through piles and pile caps for tie bars, capping beams and post fixed connections
• Penetrations through pile caps and ground beams for hydraulic, electrical and drainage services
• Test and investigation cores through piles for concrete strength, integrity and depth checks
• A ring of cores at cut off level where the pile trimming crew wants a clean line to break to

How we do it

• Every pile or cap is scanned first so the cage is mapped before the barrel touches concrete
• Hole positions are set out with the engineer or surveyor, not guessed off a drawing
• Rigs are anchored or braced to the pile so the core runs straight to full depth
• Extension barrels and stitch drilling for deep cores through large diameter piles
• Cores, slurry and spoil leave with us, and test cores are labelled and handed over intact

We core the piles. If the job is trimming or cropping pile heads down to cut off level, that is done by our sister company Perfect Strip Out. See pile trimming and cropping for that service.

Water, slurry and live buildings

Coring uses water and water goes where you do not want it. On occupied floors we run vacuum recovery, bunding and drip trays as standard, and we seal the underside where a core is going through into a tenancy below. On multi level jobs the complaint is almost never the noise. It is the water on somebody else level, so we plan for it before the first core.

We scan first, every time

Every core in a structural element is scanned and marked before the drill goes on the floor. Cutting a post tension tendon is the most expensive mistake available in this trade, and the scan that prevents it takes twenty minutes. Because we scan and core ourselves, there is one contractor accountable for both.

Where we work

Sydney, the Central Coast, Newcastle and Wollongong. Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. Larger civil and plant programs anywhere in Australia.

Common questions

Can you core without water?

For smaller diameters we can dry core with dust extraction where water is not acceptable, for example in live server rooms or over finished ceilings. Tell us the constraint and we will match the method to it.

What if you hit reinforcement?

Our barrels cut through reinforcement. The scan is not about avoiding steel, it is about avoiding tendons, live conduits and voids. If a location cannot be made safe we move it and tell you why.

Do you remove the cores?

Yes. Cores, spoil and slurry all leave with us unless you want them kept for testing.

How fast can you start?

Small packages usually within a few days. Emergency and after hours work the same day. Large bulk programs get a proper schedule so your follow on trades can plan around it.