We have an 8′ covered porch across the whole front of our house and this porch is held up by concrete piers. One of the options for these concrete piers is to auger a hole for each one and put in what is basically a cardboard tube. But this system has to have a wider footing at the bottom of the hole to distribute the load. You can either pour the larger pads one day and come back and pour the tubs another day, or you can build a box form at the bottom.
There is a third way that uses a cone that you can attach to the bottom of the tube form, but I could not find any place locally to buy them. Everybody from the big box home improvement store to my concrete place has the tubes, but nobody had the flared footings to attach to the bottom of the tube. So I ended up calling the manufacturer (http://www.bigfootsystems.com/) and while they didn’t have a dealer near me, if I ordered 6 or more they were $26 each including shipping. Conveniently I need 6 so that will work out well. Check out there website on the advantages of this form. With these will be able to pour these piers myself, saving some additional labor.