The steel pile-driving process is also extremely loud and creates a lot of vibration, so it's all but extinct inside urban areas. All the projects I've seen he

The steel pile-driving process is also extremely loud and creates a lot of vibration, so it's all but extinct inside urban areas. All the projects I've seen here in recent years, and there are hundreds, use caisson holes, wide, bored holes going straight down, to create the basis of the foundation. Once drilled, they insert steel and fill it with concrete. The equipment resembles a very large-scale post-hole digger. It seems to be fairly quick and work quite well: http://www.rwhengineering.ca/?page_id=2518 http://www.rwhengineering.ca/?page_id=2518 Although the drilling machines are somewhat loud, they're an order of magnitude quieter than the pile driving machines. The amount of banging those machines would generate was absolutely nuts.