Quote:
Originally Posted by louie_the_fly
Do you have a soil report for your block? If yay then use that as a guide. Otherwise consult your local council and enquire about soil types in your area. have a look at this site. http://www.build.com.au/building-reactive-soil-sites
My site is only slightly reactive, and top soil is shallow. My footing will only be 600 x 600 x 700 deep. because it can be. |
I don't, but that's a very good point. Thanks very much :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by glend
It's all about the mass, and block footings for a pier are not going to have the density of a solid block of concrete. Hebel blocks are aerated concrete.
Your going to have to dig the hole anyway, so why not use concrete. The big labour is in digging the hole. You can get concrete delivered and save on the mixing labour.
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All good points Glen, but the problem is I don't think I can get that delivered due to limitations in site access, as described above. Nearest water will also be 100m away (the dam, with no pump available to draw water to the site either), so there's a number of complications there.
I've seen this done with besser in the US, apparently without problems. I think there' more too it than just mass, there's going to be a lot of variables here. Inertia is important but only if there's forces acting on object. If the soil isn't very reactive I can probably get away with less. Additionally, who's to say that we actually need these massive 2000kg footings? Maybe similarly sized footings of 500kg is enough. I suspect we generally over-engineer things.
I'm going to give it a shot... if it proves ineffective you can tell me "I told you so!" :-)