Foundat'n Speak

BEFORE THE ARCHITECT – CUSTOM HOME DESIGNING BACKGROUND – HOUSE DESIGN ARTICLES

ALL ABOUT HOUSE FOUNDATION PROBLEMS and YOUR HOME DESIGN FOUNDATION PLAN DESIGN SPEAK

YOU MAY FREELY QUOTE THE AG WITH PROPER ATTRIBUTION

Home plans made easy? Home designing made easy? Home building made easy? All that's easy here is to screw it up. AG 2009

QUESTION: WHASSUP WITH HOUSE FOUNDATION PROBLEMS?

ANSWER: PRETTY NEAR NOTHING WITH A GOOD HOME FOUNDATION PLAN.

Home Foundation Plan Design - Argot, Idiom, Jargon, Speak, Vernacular

There are, to this custom home designer's thinking, two home design and home building subjects with murky lingo

	Electrical grounding and
	Concrete home foundations, particularly home foundation strip footings

Who Says? Oh, yah?

Most sources in the literature incorrectly define no more than 3 elemental forms of concrete foundations (in the field, folks know better)

	Sometimes defined by their footing, that is, by that foundation element in ultimate bearing to earth
	Sometimes not

Most basic footing have names, yes, names, including strip footing

	Continuous footing
	Continuous spread footing "spread footing"
	Footer
	Perimeter footing
	Stem wall
	Strip footing
	T-wall

In short, the other three – yes, three – with synonyms are

	Spread (i.e., not continuous) a/k/a pad, pier, post or spot footing
	Grade beam, which Before The Architect branches to include ‘modified grade beam’
	Turn down a/k/a turn-down, turned down, or turndown along with, though not necessarily, footing or footer or slab

Ready? They're all commonly referred to as ‘footers'

	Just like the vaguely descriptive ‘rim board'
	Footer can, indeed, mean all sorts of foundation elements

And lastly, there's the monolithic term ‘monolithic,' oft associated with concrete foundations

	That is, a one-time deal, placed altogether
	Strip footings are rarely monolithic, i.e., the footing is placed at an event distinctly separated temporally by, usually, days before the wall application, whether blocked or place

Comment: It is another misfortune that the separately placed wall atop the previously placed footing is most often referred to as keyed or a cold joint or . . . cold pour, and not a cold placement. Yep. (Blocked walls are, of course ‘cold,' too; however, this custom home designer has neither heard nor read such a reference to block over footing.)

The other footers are usually monolithic placements

Comment: A few might argue arguably that a slab-on-grade is itself a footing. Disputation collapses with the notion that it, as with the foundation elements above, slabs-on-grade definitionally bear directly on earth (or on layers of substrates – sand, gravel, and such – that bear ultimately, directly on earth).

This custom home designer regards such disputation as diddly – a slab-on-grade alone in home building is, to this home designer's knowledge, never intended to support house weight greater than, say, a non-bearing wall or a bog or a footfall

To wit, BTA puts its foundation design in the breach with, among others –

	T-walls interior to perimeter walls where interior walls bear
	Grade beams interior to perimeter walls where interior walls bear
	Pilasters at slab-to-wall termini of grade beams, modified grade beams, and control, or contraction, joints
	Modified grade beams along most all contraction joints
	Spread footings alone and with piles and piers
	Thickened slabs-on-grade below point or concentrated loads

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Comment: Please note, dear reader, that in all instances, sub-slab-on-grade foundation elements are continuously separated at their top of face from the bottom of face of a slab-on-grade by a continuous bond break.

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