Our Christmas present

[Rich]

Wow, lots of work! Are the poured columns setting on bedrock? Wondering how far you have to go down to hit bedrock? I know it will very...

[Luigi Zanasi]

Interesting Swing. And I thought we had problems with permafrost.

Luigi

[nailshooter41]

Nicely done, Leon!

You may be the first ever to have your house built on time, finished at the expected date (unless of course, you have Swing build it..... ;^) ) in good order.

Good for you!

I have a feeling this is long deserved for you and Kim. I'll bet she is thrilled. The house looks great.

Robert

[chaniarts]

in 2001, i had a custom house built that came in 3 days under schedule, and under budget to boot. leon may be the 2nd.

[Leon]

Thank you Robert, maybe y'all can squeeze a peek while you are down.

[Robatoy]

A Texan was visiting Toronto and he was going on and on about the size of the Astrodome and how quickly they built it. While driving past the CN tower, he asked the cabbie: "What's that tall tower called?" The cabbie said: "I don't know, it wasn't here this morning...."

[Swingman]

The piers are approximately 22' deep, with 36" bell bottoms, and it was basically the same clay to that depth, and no telling how much further to bedrock.

This was about 25 miles East of Austin. .5 miles to the West of Austin you would hit rock by scuffling your boot real hard ...

[Luigi Zanasi]

Wouldn't you still get expansive soils at that depth?

Luigi

[tiredofspam]

>>

[Swingman]

Basically soil at depth is not necessarily subject to the same effects of changes due to dry/wet years as at the surface, and/or even transmitted to the surface to the same extent.

IOW, unless you're drilling for oil, you gotta stop somewhere. ;)

[Martin Eastburn]

This is a complex dome or like name foundation. It isn't a slab.

Slabs were solid. The issue with these - they won't hold weight like in a shop. Oh yea toy shops. But put a mill or grinder or a big lathe and the slab will crack. The center is to thin. I've seen 2" centers and only outsides in the shell. Looks like a slab but put a truck or weight on it and crack.

Mart> >

[Martin Eastburn]

My house in Northern California was like that - 8' deep because we were on a slope (near 45 degree). Code was 48".

My curtain walls were not strong foundation like those! Those look great. I had 18 each 8' dug deep holes.

Good job there.

Mart> Sw>

>>> The soil in this area heaved up to six inches depending upon drought >> cycles.

[Larry Jaques]

On some things, you stop drilling at 6 or 8". (Oops, OT.)

-- If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice. -- Meister Eckhart

[nailshooter41]

Sure it is. A concrete slab is often referred to as a slab, regardless if the underlying engineering. The correct name of this example is "post tension cable slab". I have certainly inspected my share, as have my engineering buddies.

have been around for many years, and I saw them used extensively as a young man framing houses in the early/mid 70's. There are literally hundreds of thousands of them around here. IF the are installed properly, the make a economical, structurally sound solution.

Nope. If you saw a post tension cable slab that wouldn't hold weight, they were probably engineered incorrectly or installed out of specification requirements. Don't blame slab failure on poor engineering or poor implementation.

This type of installation is routinely used here in South Texas where warranted and cost efficient. If you are building in a country town far away from equipment, engineers, etc., a conventional slab of rebar/ concrete will still be the answer.

Why? A post tension slab carries its own soil compaction requirements, as well as a study of the substrate to identify its plasticity. This requires a lot of testing lab time as well as the proper machinery to compact the pad (usually in lifts) to meet the correct specs.

Here's a great discussion as a reprint from Residential Concrete magazine:

does a nice job discussing loads, use, etc. and should put your mind at ease to see that installed properly they will carry a great load.

Note the part where they discuss active or live cracking resistance. This probably the single largest reason this type of slab construction is used in most of our town.

Out in the country, all that equipment and trips by engineers to make sure you have a proper pad and the engineer's papwork to prove it is cost prohibitive, so they still pour the way they did 150 years ago. Put twice as much steel in the slab as you need and add more beams to be safe, then pour the best strength concrete you can afford. It's an expensive slab.

But that old fashioned style is not needed when equipment, labs, engineers, etc., are twenty minutes away. That is why post tension is now used for apartments (some three stories!), heavy duty car parking lots, and all manner of heavy use slabs of concrete.

But there are two major problems with post tension methodology.

1) the guy that tensions the cables must understand exactly what he is doing, and how important it is to be accurate when tensioning. This requires training and someone without ADD. Also, it was found here after examining sever PT slab failures, that the dogs (wedges) that hold the cable were damaged by the tensioning crew.

When they have finished tensioning, they let the cables relax for a day or two, then cut the excess cable off with a torch. It was found that the poor cutting technique of the cutter (usually a laborer) got the wedges in the retaining jaws on the cable so hot they lost their tempering. They teeth became soft, they slipped, and the cable lost its tension. Nothing but bad after that.

2) You cannot pour complex shapes. Post tension shines on today's mono-level house slabs, in our post sunken room era. Steps up, steps down, to sunken rooms, garages, etc., that break up the single or double plane of a slab make it cost prohibitive to work around the profile/elevation differences.

Probably more than you ever wanted....

Robert

[Swingman]

More than any one, except engineers and builders, would want to know, and IMO, the definitive guide to foundations in expansive soils:

parent organization ... guys know their stuff:

[nailshooter41]

I love stuff like that!

BUT.... I can't save the .pdf file. I can print it, but no saving to disk. I checked the security settings on the pdf itself, and it said that it isn't protected and could be printed or saved. Apparently not by me.

Print, yes. Save, no.

Any ideas?

Robert

[Han]

" [e-mail]" wrote in news:002b6097- [e-mail]:

I had no problem saving it. See attached. If it doesn't come through I can post it to abpw. Sorry, had to yEnc it.

[Han]

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[Lee Michaels]

What works for me sometimes is to bring the pdf file up to look at it. Then go to the different save functions on screen.

I don't know how clear that is. It is just that sometimes I can not copy the file directly. So I display the document on my monitor. THEN I save it from within the displayed document itself. Most of the time, this works. And I mean different save functions too. I have had the file/save function not work. And the little floppy SAVE icon work. No rhyme or reason apparent here.

There seems to be some kind of strange format protection built into some pdf documents. You can not copy the files. But you can save the file when displayed.

Like I said, this works most of the time. There are pdf documents that I have not been able to save though.

[Luigi Zanasi]

permafrost (there is also the thawing issue). One solution for permafrost is a space frame foundation. See for example one old article from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation: ftp://ftp.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/cmhc/90_222.html

Luigi