Types of House Foundations for New Homes
While building a new home you need to consider many components. The most important component is the foundation of the home, as the foundation will support the entire structure of the home by transferring the weight of the home to the ground. Generally, Luxury Home Builders Melbourne designs the house foundation by considering the slope of the land, the weight of the building and the soil the home is to be built on. A soil report is required for an engineer before designing a footing system for your home.
The intention of the soil report is to test the level of reactivity of the soil with moisture conditions, to test the bearing capacity of the soil. To perform soil test, samples are taken from a number of locations across the construction site. These samples are tested in the laboratory and are allocated into the categories, which are set out in Australian standards.
The categories of soil for construction are as follows:
- Stable and Non-Reactive Soil: Most of the sand and rock sites with no ground movement or with very little ground movement from moisture changes comes under stable and non-reactive soil type.
- Slightly Reactive Sites: In this kind of sites, only slight ground movement is experienced from moisture changes.
- Moderately Reactive Sites: These kinds of sites are clay or soil sites, which may experience moderate ground movement from moisture changes.
- Highly Reactive Sites: These are clay sites that may experience high ground movement from moisture changes.
- Very Highly Reactive Clay Sites: These are clay sites that may experience very high ground movement from moisture changes.
- Extremely Reactive Sites: These sites may experience extreme ground movement from moisture changes.
- Problem Soil: In these kinds of Soils, the building strength is inadequate or the ground movement may be affected by factors other than relative soil movement due to moisture conditions. This problem soil can also include soft or unstable foundations such as loose sand or silt or soft clay, collapsing soils, mine subsidence, soils subjects to erosion and landslip and reactive soils with abnormal moisture conditions and sites that do not come under the above classifications.
This soil classification helps engineer to determine the depth of the foundation, the strength of the concrete to be used and the grade of steel to use.
All the foundations should be found in natural ground. The natural ground is undisturbed ground on site. If the site has uncontrolled fill on it or the natural ground is exceptionally deep, then the foundation must be bored through the poor soil and into the natural ground, which is common throughout Melbourne and is called bored piers. So, all the Luxury Home Builders Melbourne is more cautious and using modern technologies for custom constructions.
The strength of the concrete is determined in MPA (Mega Pascals). Conventional slabs require 20 MPA or 25 MPA concrete. The stronger slabs may require 32MPA or more MPA of concrete. Steel is added to give more stiffness and strength to the concrete. Steel mesh Build-up is added for extra strength.
The engineer will draft the required size of the square mesh to get the needed fitness of the slab. The square mesh is classified by the sizes from SL62, SL72 to SL102. The first digit denotes the diameter of the bars and the last digit denotes the spacing of the bars. For example, if the size is SL62, then it has 6mm diameter bars on a grid of 200mm spacing. The strength of mesh is more if the rating of mesh is high. Stronger slabs require more steel. The depth of concrete rib of the slab to be founded in the ground generally depends on the soil report. The strength of the slab increases with the founding depth. Much of the Home Builders Brighton and Home Builders St Kilda are using this technology for custom constructions.
Generally, in residential construction there are 5 main types of foundation systems:
- Concrete slabs
- Suspended concrete slabs
- Basements
- Strip footing
- Stumps
In today's difficult sites and modern technology, it is common to use all the types of foundations in constructing one house. Hope this article is helpful to you in knowing about the types of foundation.