Human pile driving in Thailand

[Jon]

"Pile driving videos" is a thing on YouTube, and "Human pile driving" is a subgenre of it. Of that subgenre, this is the finest selection I've seen.

It's not exactly living up to human potential when peoples' collective weight is used for construction purposes (especially with not a shoe in sight!), but this video is still fun. This has been making the rounds as a GIF lately, but the 29-second video below includes the excellent sound.

Watch the guy at the bottom-center, keeping the post straight while playing the tambourine to synchronize everyone's steps.

Previously: Human-powered ferris wheel

[Moby Duck]

Ingenious and better than no piles at all but this has to be soft swampy ground for it to work at all. I note that they stop when their cross bar reaches the ground. Good piles need to be rammed until they reach bed rock or at the very least until they stop and can be rammed no further. I once watched a modern concrete four story building being built right outside my workplace window. They used huge 40 ft long piles and just kept adding extra piles on top as necessary until they would go no further. Some stopped around 120 ft and others around 160 ft and all were cut to the required height on completion. The area was previously an asphalt car park and the first pile of each slipped in so fast down to the 40 ft mark that they set the asphalt on fire. There were no couplings between the extra lengths as they were added, just butted together and rammed with a fairly simple lift and drop deadweight diesel powered rammer.