Finding soil bearing capacity?

[RedNeckRacin]

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You need to have a soils engineer look at the soil and an architect or a mechanical engineer design the building and the piers.

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Dave,

That is all Civil Engineer territory. Foundations, soils, and Structures are all classes that I have taken. Architects design for pretty and mechanical engineers design for movement, neither of which will make a building stand. :thumbsup:

To the OP, A soil proctor test and a shear test is the only thing thats going to get you what you need. It must be done in the field as well due to the large effect that moisture has on the strength of soils. Or it can be calculatd based on an assumed moisture content. Water does some very interesting things to soils when its under pressure. A soil will also gain some strength when the water is pressed out of it. (Compacted or consolidated) The cheapest option would be to play it conservative. I would be asking around to the local builders and see what they have been using. I would also be looking for some neighbors with older buildings to figure out how they were put in. You might be able to go to the local college and the grad students might run the test free of charge.


why are you so concerned about the pile weight capacites? You should never build with a factor of safety of 1:1.

 

[IHDiesel73L]

why are you so concerned about the pile weight capacites? You should never build with a factor of safety of 1:1.

For all I know I need not be concerned. I just figured I'd draw on the knowledge base here. I'm sure there are plenty of buildings around where some poles were thrown in the ground, backfilled, and stuff was built on top of them after someone said "Yep...looks good." That's just not my style.

 

[RedNeckRacin]

For all I know I need not be concerned. I just figured I'd draw on the knowledge base here. I'm sure there are plenty of buildings around where some poles were thrown in the ground, backfilled, and stuff was built on top of them after someone said "Yep...looks good." That's just not my style.

Nor should it be. I appreciate the forethought your putting into this. My question was more related to the weight of the building. I.E. What type of weights or structure are we dealing with in particular? A broad load is much easier to deal with than a point loading is. Not so much as to why in the world are you considering designing this. I'm all for making sure something is built the right way. My bad.

 

[IHDiesel73L]

Nor should it be. I appreciate the forethought your putting into this. My question was more related to the weight of the building. I.E. What type of weights or structure are we dealing with in particular? A broad load is much easier to deal with than a point loading is. Not so much as to why in the world are you considering designing this. I'm all for making sure something is built the right way. My bad.

Basically I'm building somewhat of a "hybrid" pole building. My original intent was to build a fairly simple polebarn with 6 x 6 x 16' uprights on 48" deep, 18" diameter x 12" thick footings. However, the water table (especially right now) at my building site is very high. Based on that, I came to the conclusion that putting posts in the ground, treated or not, was a bad idea. What I decided was to put in piers and then bolt a 6 x 6 grade beam/sill to them. Inside the perimeter of the sill I'll be backfilling with clean fill, compacting, and then topping it with stone screenings. After that, I'll stick frame the walls and build a pretty conventional 16 x 24 barn. The piers will be carrying the weight of the walls, roof, and two 8 x 16 lofts at either end of the building. The lofts will be used for storage of out of season stuff like clothes, Christmas decorations, etc... Heavy stuff will be on the floor and therefore not imparting any load on the piers.