LILBURN, GEORGIA — Cantsink a leading general contractor specializing in foundation repair using helical piling, is proud to announce two new initiatives that demonstrate the company’s commitment to environmental preservation and going green while offering customers the most environmentally friendly and cost-efficient options for foundation repair and stabilization.
The first is the company’s transition to solar power at its Lilburn, Georgia-based headquarters and manufacturing plant. With this 100 percent transition to solar power, Cantsink is now a net-zero user of power off the electrical grid, exceeding the term “going green”.
“We’ve been planning this transition for almost a year,” says Pat Hutchinson, President of Cantsink. “Our goal was to identify the best ways to stay ahead of our competitors environmentally and economically and offer our customers earth-friendly solutions at the lowest cost.”
According to Hutchinson, the solar panels have a useful life of between 25 and 40 years, and Cantsink will recoup its upfront investment in the panels in about three years. “To me, if you can make a three-year investment in your business that will pay off for the next 40 years and help preserve the environment at the same time, that’s a smart business move.”
The second initiative is the company’s aggressive move into a new market for its helical piles: using the piles to support ground-mounted solar panel arrays. Hutchinson says helical piles are “a far superior solution” for supporting solar panel arrays for a variety of reasons beyond going green.
“First is the ease of installation,” he says. “Many solar arrays are going up on landfills and other surfaces where the ground isn’t absolutely flat. This requires using a ballasted system, which is very labor-intensive and time-consuming and can be disruptive to the environment. With helical piles, there’s no devegetation, soil displacement or erosion the piles are simply screwed into the ground. They work on almost any kind of topography and provide immediate stability, without waiting for concrete to dry.”
In addition, helical piles provide greater response in shallow depths, and they’re also selftesting. “We know what their support capability is when we install them,” Hutchinson explains. “This isn’t the case with other types of ground-mounted solar panel array support systems, where you don’t know if the ground will settle later and make the panels unstable.”
In June, Hutchinson attended the American Solar Energy Society convention in Phoenix, where he spoke with a number of different manufacturers of solar panels and panel racking systems about integrating helical piles into their systems. None have done so yet, he notes, but two have asked Cantsink of Atlanta to help them get started in this process of going green.
“It’s a wonderful fit for both the solar panel manufacturers and the environment.”
Cantsink of Atlanta was founded in 1988 as the only general contractor in the area specializing in foundation repair using helical piling. Since then, the company has helped thousands of satisfied customers solve their foundation problems, primarily using helical piles. Cantsink of Atlanta has built a reputation as a leading innovator in the foundation repair industry, having installed more than 1 million feet of helical piling—enough to stretch from Atlanta to Knoxville, Tennessee and beyond if laid end to end—in more than 10,000 area homes.
