THE Plastic Piling Range

MultiLock® Plastic Sheet Piling

ProLock Omega Plastic Piling

Truline PVC Piling

Economy Plastic Piling

Z Vinyl Sheet Piling

U Vinyl Sheet Piles

Plastic Sheet Piling

Plastic sheet piling are structural interlocking sheets used for retaining, excluding and the provision of a hard edge. Our plastic sheet piling, also know as vinyl sheet piling or simply PVC piling, is produced using recycled uPVC.

So what can plastic piling be used for?

As mentioned retention, so supporting ground in a retaining wall, or a revetment on the side of a river or bulkheads, road haunching, quay headings, landing stages and seawalls.

Plastic Piling offers excellent watertightness and so it is used in a wide range flood management schemes, crest and bund elevations, cut off walls, flood fences, wetland restoration.

Overlapping many of these applications would be the provision of a hard edge for erosion control or scour protection. Lining channels, securing fishing swims and pegs, protecting the toe of an embankment or seawall.

When comparing sheet piling to other methods, such as gabion baskets, the two main feature benefits tend to be the very narrow footprint, maximising the size of the garden or waterway. They also require no real preparation, very much an install and go methodology.

Our overview information is shown to the right, and also a brochure on the installation of plastic sheet piling. Click on the image to open and save the files.

So who uses plastic piling?

Such a niche product appeals to a very broad spectrum of customers and end users. Some examples include:

The Environment Agency
The Canal and River Trust
Councils
Forestry Commission
Natural England
Network Rail
Highways England
Civil Engineering and Construction Companies
Canal Restoration Trusts
Wildlife Trusts
Estate Management
Drainage Authorities
Farmers
Waterways Contractors
Piling Contractors
Landscape Contractors
Utility Contractors and Shoring Companies
Fisheries & Fishing Clubs
Marina Owners and developers
Volunteer groups for example wetland groups
DIY’ers, yes we have many home owners installing the products themselves.

Plastic sheet piling has been available in the UK for over 30 years and whilst the concept originated from the USA, it has been the European producers that have taken the lead in technological and design advancement. THE Plastic Piling Company is proud to be in association with leading manufacturers Profextru and Pietrucha from Europe, and the USA produced Truline box piles. As such we offer the UK and Ireland an unparalleled range of plastic sheet pile products.

Why PVC piling?

We are well aware that many environmentalists may have an initial knee-jerk reaction to the word plastic. It isn’t hard to come across article stating “we need to reduce our dependency on plastics as they last for a very long time”, or discussions about the “poisons created when plastic is first made”.

So lets look at this, our products seek to combine long lasting materials with applications that require long term solutions. We want the plastic to last a very long time providing a functional use. We aren’t producing a short lived single use item. PVC has been used in construction and civil engineering for decades, as it has many properties that make it an excellent material for long term applications. The generalised properties are shown on the right. One of which shows PVC’s excellent chemical and water resistance, its products light, but strong and durable.

Plastic piles will therefore not rot, rust or corrode, making them exceptionally useful in salt water environments.

PVC is also impervious to marine borers—small mollusks and crustaceans that can destroy wooden piles.

This longevity reduces the need for constant maintenance and replacement, minimising environmental disturbance from construction activities. This longevity also provides economic benefits, do a job once and do it right. The minimal maintenance of plastic piling will lead to long term savings.

But what about the chemical nasties produced during its production? Well following on from the PVC legacy above, there is a large amount of waste PVC to reuse and recycle. Recycling this waste PVC requires far lower energy levels, combined with no new material production, so now new nasties as by using recycled material this is no longer an issue. We are using material that has already been made and put to use at least once. PVC can be recycled up to 6 times before its properties are affected. This diverting post-consumer plastics from landfills.

One of the greatest advancements in plastic piling is the high quality of the recycled material being used. This in turn produces a much higher quality end product.

Yes, plastics do last a very long time, so is it best to put to constructive use, in a location where it can be accessed and recycled in the future.

Most sheet piling applications need long lasting solutions, such as retaining structures, flood defences, cut-off walls, erosion control, and scour protection, clearly it makes sense that plastic “benefit” piling. Providing a solution for plastic waste, not a contributor.

Providing durable long lasting solutions, often in hard to reach areas. The method that the plastic piling is produced is call extrusion, and this process enables the production of a much wider spectrum of sheet pile designs than is financially or technically viable with steel sheet piling. Meaning that whilst we can offer traditional U and Z piles, as for steel, we can go beyond what is possible with steel, and offer novel, more versatile sheet pile designs.

These new designs, we say new, but we have been selling them for nearly 20 years now, but technically still new in the world of sheet piling; we market as THE Advanced Piles. These profiles increase the versatility of the product, improve installation, performance and improve the aesthetics.

Taking the last one, aesthetic, one of the biggest criticisms that sheet piling suffers is its appearance, the repeated regular, often deep, corrugations, Plastic Piling provide a more attractive and less industrial appearance. Note, whilst colour options are possible, this is rare as it requires quite a large quantity, and often colours offer are quite bold. Therefore, the most common colours for plastic piling tend to be brown or grey.

It isn’t just about appearance though, these distinctive sheet pile designs, dramatically increase the versatility of the product, speeding up installation, enabling the use of smaller installation equipment and provide solutions that often compete with the budget products, as you can use much shorter lengths. When used in conjunction with softwood posts, hardwood posts, steel tubes, scaffold tubes, steel I beams even bamboo.

These hybrid solutions enable you to benefit from a wide variety of strength options. You can switch from a traditional sheet piling run, to a king post design. This makes these products ideal for erosion control and retaining walls, often in very hard ground conditions, such as railway ballast.

Also by using shorter lengths of plastic piling, combined with softwood posts, you minimise how much plastic is being used, limiting it to only where it is beneficial. Reliant on the softwood only in regions where it is stable. Where the softwood is prone to rotting, you have the plastic pile, so the structure is now suitable for the long terms with research showing a 60 year life.

This concept extended further by Jacqui Hogger of Essex Highways, with Ringway Jacobs and Topbond, where they combined the use of MultiLock® plastic piling with bamboo tubes. This novel combination was a shortlisted finalist at the 2016 British Construction Industry awards.

A very interesting project involved the use of MultiLock® plastic piling and Dywidag 32mm hollow galvanised bar, drilled into the rock-head and grouted through the hexagon tube of the MultiLock® sheet pile. This providing additional road haunching and edge retention on the end of the Langholm B6318 Road, which had suffered a landslide.

But how does it compare to steel piling?

This is perhaps the one question we get asked the most often, traditionally sheet piling is made from steel and so it isn’t surprising to be asked what does plastic bring to the table in comparison to that standard.

However, whilst we can make a few generic statements it is important to be specific when making a comparison. Within our extensive range of plastic sheet piling the lightest plastic sheet pile of our range doesn’t really compete with the most heavy duty. Very much in the same way that cold formed steel trench sheeting doesn’t really compare to hot rolled steel piles.

Firstly, we like to think of Plastic Piling (Vinyl sheet piling/PVC sheet piling) as an extension of steel sheet piling, rather than a competing product. However we can make the following generic statements.

In terms of strength plastic sheet piling offers a range that is comparable to cold formed steel trench sheets. Only composites, such as the polyesters and polyurethanes, or fibre reinforced PVC, such as the SuperLock from Pietrucha come close to offering strengths similar to hot rolled steel piles. So if the application requires high strength, high impact resistance or hard driving, then we would always suggest you consider steel piling.
When installing steel sheet piling, there is a lot more types of equipment that can be used for steel, pile presses, hydraulic impact hammers. With plastic piling we are mostly limited to using piling vibrators.
Plastic Piling requires no hot work, and is spark proof.
Plastic piling is safer to work with, it can be manually handled and is unlikely to cause injury.
Plastic piling is all interlocking sheets, we have no overlapping options as in trench sheeting.
PVC, like many plastic materials can exhibit performance changes under extreme temperature conditions. Becoming brittle in very cold climates or there may be issues of softening in hot temperatures. One of the benefits of the UK is that we dont tend to experience the extremes where this would be an issue. For example plastic piling is used in Africa, the Carribean and Australia. All so much harsher and hotter environments than the UK. The example below showing salt ponds in Australia. When entering winter, we simply tell customers to take more care during installation, as the sheet pile would be exposed to much higher forces during installation, than in situ.

Plastic piling interlocks are much more watertight than cold form trench sheeting, so are excellent options for damming or cut-off structures. So long as the sheet pile can driven to the required cut-off depth, the longevity of the plastic sheet piling puts it in a different league to that of steel sheet piling.
Plastic sheet piling is also available with seals or gaskets inbuilt into the sheet pile. Improving the watertighten considerably.

The superior watertightness of plastic sheet piling enables it to compete favourable, both in terms of performance and cost to hot rolled steel piles. The technology of vinyl sheet piles with an integrated gasket is used primarily in projects where extremely high tightness is required.

The tightness of interlocks in plastic sheet piling walls depends on the following factors:

The shape of the interlock, which can extend or shorten the fluid path travelled through the interlock.
The width of a single sheet pile, the wider the section the fewer the joints, the New Epsilon sheets has an effective width of 730mm. Ultra U piles around 600mm. So by opting for wider plastic piles you can reduce leakage through the wall.
The hydrostatic pressure affecting the wall. The higher the pressure, the lower the possibility of the silting up of the interlocks, as they are flushed out.
The higher the tightness and the pressure on the interlocks all surfaces the smaller the gaps reducing water flow through it.

When strength is an issue, then when comparing plastic sheet piles against an equivalently strong steel pile, we would expect a comparability in material and hence sheet pile price. It is important to note that the material price for plastic, particularly recycled plastic has remained stable for many years and as such unlike price fluctuation seen with steel, plastic pile can offer you price stability.

The clear exception to this is the plastic piling hybrids, combining cheap softwood with MultiLock Plastic Piling provides and extremely good value solution. With much of a sheet pile buried from view, sometimes twice as much, using a system that minimises the amount of sheet pile to just where you need it can provide substantial cost savings. The hybrid system has been proven to last as long as the plastic pile and hybrid overlap beneath the ground the combined structure will last a very long time.