The project originally called for drilled bell bottoms concrete piers at a depth of 12-14ft. After drilling the first one, the sand and water was more than the first contractor wanted to get in to after seeing the amount of water coming out of the ground.
In comes 3h Engineering, piers were redesigned to be shallower and wider. This helped but because of Hurricane Harvey, the water table increased even more than before. Problems with water still present.
The property is in a flood zone, between two bodies of water: A small lake and a man made pit. Two top it off it also straddled the border of two different types of soils. Something the geotechnical engineers did not catch.
After waiting a few weeks to see if the water table will decrease to no avail, it was finally decided to go ahead and pump the water out. Six pumps at one point were used (1-4 inches) to keep the water under control and allowed the construction to move forward.
It worked, we couldn't fight the water, we just had to work with it and we kept it out, enough to dry it, compact, form and place reinforcement and finally pour.
We were able to do it in one pour. The height of he column is about 4ft and the concrete did not overflow the base from the pressure.