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Because the
pier is so long it had a bit of sway when you gave it a firm shove at
the top and it took what seemed too long to dampen out. To
stabilize the pier, the steel band in the picture below was bolted
around the pier. Four pre-stressed high tension cables were
attached to the band and extend at an angle to the pier base in the
crawl space. Despite tightening the band as much as possible and
adding a number of sharp raised "grippers" to the inside of the band
which dig into the pier, the band slipped when we applied about a ton of
force to each of the four cables. This problem was solved by
welding vertical straps to the band which were then bolted into the
cement pier.
