With a new home the earth is about the only unknown quantity. We recently had a small house with a detached garage torn down in an existing inner city neighborhood so that we could build a new, small, energy efficient house with an attached garage in its place. The old house and the two adjacent houses were all in good shape and showed no signs of settling. While removing the old house we discovered that the top portion of the site was a landfill with trash that had been burned. Layers of cinders and ash were our first clue, so we ordered a soils report. The soil borings told us that the top thirteen feet of the building site were not suitable for bearing the weight of a two-story home.
We were faced with two choices, helical piers or soil remediation, both acceptable solutions. Soil remediation turned out to be 2/3 the cost of helical piers even with the cost of shoring to retain the integrity of the two adjacent properties. The site was excavated to the basement floor before the shoring began. The shoring consisted of 5” steel tubes 24’ long driven 16’ into the ground at 2’8” on center with ¾” plywood applied to the backside of the steel. Then 500 yards of bad soil were hauled away until we reached soil of adequate bearing capacity, then 400 yards of sand was trucked in and compacted in lifts until we reached the bottom level of the new footings.
With all the earthly unknowns known, the concrete poured!
Eric Odor has decades of experience using unique yet beautiful materials. For some more commentary on his designs, take a look at some of Eric's past posts! For more of his work, visit his profile page!