On Sat, 05 Aug 2006 19:49:26 GMT, "dennis@home"
wrote:

|
|"Dave Fawthrop" wrote in message
.. .
| On Sat, 05 Aug 2006 11:34:32 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:


| The problem is more difficult than that on made up ground, of which there
| is a lot on the West Riding. I watched some houses being built near us,
| and some were on reinforced rafts with 12 inch dia concrete piles. Another
| was on a four ft deep block of solid concrete. My house is on a
| reinforced
| raft.
|
|Mine is on a six foot thick reinforced raft.. more steel in it than a bridge
|I saw.
|The house next door is on four foot deep strip foundations.
|
|There is no difference to the soil.. apparently the builder had purchased
|some foundations in bulk and was using these rafts whatever the soil
|conditions.

Mine **needed** the concrete raft. I put up an extension and one day found
a building inspector in the bottom of the foundations digging out shale as
if it were granulated sugar. He said "reinforced concrete raft or go down
to original ground level", which could have been another 20-30 ft. I put
in a reinforced concrete raft.
--
Dave Fawthrop dave hyphenologist co uk Google Groups is IME the *worst*
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