How long for dirt to settle?

[SPIKER]

snooks it probably would be OK, BUT there is always the chance of the old basement moving some if the footing is aginst it and pushing down it is forcing the old walls IN or away from the new footing. I would go with full basement it would only be a few grand more than the 4' crawl space... then you have storage and good access under the new home for plumbing, HVAC ect. not to mention a place to hide when the big tornados (or in-laws) come along! /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

MarkM

 

[snooks]

Yeah, I think your right. I have laid stakes and looked at this thing from all angles. The building is actually going to be an accounting office. To get it wide enough so as to not run into problems with the unstable ground, I find it is messing up my floor plans. I end up right back where I started and that is to include a basement. Of coarse the question then becomes do I want poured walls, prefab walls, block walls, ect..... I have a client that does the prefab walls and they look pretty nice. Probably in the long run that would be the way to go. They are designed in such a way they can be insulated and have cavities for wiring and the like. This would potentially allow for further expansion and/or record storage.

 

[drm]

Snooks,

The new foundation will exert forces that may influence the existing foundation wall. With the backfill behind the existing wall not compacted to structural compaction requirements (although I realize you did compact the fill with your tractor, structural requirements are very stringent requiring a very high level of compaction, 95 to 98% compaction) this may cause problems with the new foundation down the road.

General guidelines to try to avoid this are as follows:
The bottom edge of the new foundation needs to be as far away from the existing foundation wall as it is above the top of the old foundation. In other words, if the bottom of the new foundation is 4 feet above existing footing, the edge of the new foundation needs to be four feet from the existing wall.

…Derek

 

[snooks]

Thanks for the information. If I dig out the dirt from the old basement, which was about 6 feet in the ground, and make the new basement a little deeper I think I should be fine. Since it is an office building, I want the first floor very close to ground level so I don't have to have a long wheel chair ramp. Thanks for all the input, it has allowed me to think this thing through. Basement it will be.....

 

[Eric_Phillips]

I am not sure what prefab stuff you have been looking at but we just built our new house with Superior Wall System, the original stuff not the new higher insulation one. We have only been in the house for a year but I like it so much better than block wall. The wood furring strips on the walls make it easy to hang stuff like shelving.

Eric