foundations

[james2042]

Anyone have experience digging foundations? I'm digging my own and it's my first ever. My luck I picked the spot a house was buried and have ran into lots of blocks and concrete. The biggest issue I see and I'm not sure it's an issue yet is the ground kinda floats when I drive over it with my skid steer.This is found to be a block crawl space with a 12x16 footer . Am I good to go? Will my drain around the footer dry it up? Thanks in advance.

 

[CM1995]

No that's not good. At the least you'll need to excavate your footings down to hard original ground. Depending on how bad the soil is under the proposed basement slab you may be able to leave that and pour over it. How bad is it pumping?

 

[james2042]

It's not coming out of the ground. It was dirt on top and 4 foot down turned to clay. The clay is what's floating like. I'm going to dig a drain today and see how much water I get. The back yard is very wet and has an old 8 foot well that's full .

 

[DoyleX]

Dig it to virgin. If the groundwater is that high do not scrimp. Are you hellbent on building there? If so lots of screened rock and more rock are in your future. Can you daylight a pipe out to grade to drain the area?

 

[CM1995]

James can you post a few pics of the site? It's tough giving good advice without seeing it, which we can't obviously but some pics might give more back story.

When I asked how bad it was pumping I meant how bad is the soil moving under the skid steer? Pumping soil means the soil is rutting and rolling when a piece of machinery or truck is running over it. Small ruts or movement not so bad, depending on the situation, deep ruts and rolling ground in front or behind the machine is bad.

A common check on building pads is proof rolling with a loaded tandem dump, if the dirt doesn't move it's good to go for residential and light commercial buildings.

Oh yeah, Welcome to the Forums!:drinkup

 

[pafarmer]

I agree with the others. The area sounds poor and if its not dug out to virgin you are asking for a lifetime worth of headaches....pictures would be helpful .....poor drainage is very common in upstate NY and the Northern Teir of Pa. It needs to be handled correctly now because after the house is in , everything in terms of cost to correct is going to be ten times the cost of doing it right now...