Housing in Southern Africa March 2015

Construction Equipment & Transport

Joburg’s ‘soapie’ studios

S asani Studios has produced a number of local soapies and major reality shows, including Egoli, Scandal, Rhythm City and Big Brother Africa amongst others. Sasani management appointed Gauteng Pil- ing to oversee the foundations for the new double storey studio complex being built by the main contractor, Chakita Construction. Keo Lekutu, Gauteng Piling’s Site Manager for the project, says that the new studio complex will be used for the filming of a high-profile TV reality show and will accommodate change rooms, wardrobe area, stages and control rooms. Gauteng Piling provided 91 auger- cast piles in a period of two and a half weeks. The depth of the piles ranged from 7 m to 12 m, and from 450 mm to 950 mm in diameter. From previous experience on the site the company knew what to ex- pect from the soil conditions on site. The soil quality was generally good but there were old foundations on part of the site. The heavy summer rains also flooded the site’s lower platform and the main contractor had to import and compact material Leading piling company, Gauteng Piling, recently completed the sinking of 91 augercast piles to form the foundations for the Sasani Studios soapie complex.

Terraforce’s new licensee tomake the sitemoreworkable,” says Lekutu. Two Williams rigs, a Williams LDHdigger with 5.5t-mtorque - which has for long been the benchmark for auger cast machines in the piling in- dustry - and aWilliams LLDHmachine with 8.8t-m torque were used on site. An auger cast pile is formed by drilling a hole into the ground, plac- ing steel reinforcement and then filling with concrete. Auger cast piles cause minimal disturbance and are often used for noise and environmen- tally sensitive sites. The company has completed over 1 500 projects and its current fleet consists of 20 auger drilling machines, two cranes, two bore rigs, four Grundo hammers and two lateral support machines. ■

M oorcrofts, awet cast concrete specialist, is the latest Ter- raforce licensee in Clarens, in the Free State. Tim Moorcroft from Moorcroofts signed a deal with Terraforce to pro- duce hard-lawn pavers with durable mould boxes made of UV stabilised LLDPE (polyethylene). Moorcroft felt that the blocks and the method of manufacture would fit in perfectly with his existing business model. The deal was signed last Octo- ber and production commenced in December. Since then Moorcrofts have supplied and installed 1 000 Terracrete blocks to local businesses.

The Clarens company also pro- vided 2 000 Terracrete blocks and reinforcing for the driveway of a local guest house. With tight timelines and stock challenges over the traditional holiday period for the construction sector, Moorcrofts met the deadlines. Situated in the Drakensberg foothills, the village of Clarens boasts a perma- nent population of 750 to 800 people and at weekends this escalates to 2 500 people. The bottom line is that the sup- plier’s enthusiasmand that little bit of extra effort has paidoff andnow there is a lot of interest from local residents and businesses. ■

March 2015