Bob wrote:
"EXT" wrote in
anews.com:

Bob in WI wrote:
Planning to build a 3-season cabin in northern WI (sandy soil, 100'
from a lake, weather extremes but no earthquakes). To spread the
costs I'll get by with a sand point well and a privy at first, add
indoor plumbing a few years later.

One option is to contract with a company that builds garages and
cabins. They frame the walls in their factory, erect on a reinforced
concrete slab over 12" sand buildup. They've been doing these for 20
years
A concrete slab on a foot of sand buildup doesn't sound very good. I
hope that you are planning on a concrete stiffener wall with
reinforcement, around the edge of the slab down into the soil. This
will stop little critters from tunneling under the slab and removing
the sand.



My notes from talking to one of their reps a few years ago says '12" x 10"
footing'. That what you mean?
Sounds about right, as long as that foot-wide by 10" thick footer beam
(with suitable rebar) is down below the frostline, in undisturbed soil.
Don't forget suitable rebar coming up out of it to tie into the poured
or block walls that lead up to your slab.

Nobody else said it so I will- I'd price it out as slab, and as a floor
over an insulated crawlspace, even if you have to have somebody else
build the floor and this company just drops their prefab cabin on it. If
the place is really remote, getting the crew and redi-mix truck up there
a second time to pour the slab may be around the same price as adding a
conventional floor system to the plans. A wood floor will be warmer, and
plumbing is a lot easier to fix if it isn't buried in a slab.

Of course, none of this applies if they were going to do it as a
monolithic pour, which would be pretty rare below frostline. Listen to
the others- you don't want a glorified garage floor under your cabin.
You want a small house. Personally, if I couldn't do a proper
traditional foundation, I'd do piers before I did a slab. (rebarred
concrete poured in sonotube forms lasts a long time, if done properly.)
Piers are the traditional way to do a cabin anyway, and if the ground
moves (like on a slope), you can always just jack things back into level
and redo the piers as needed. Can't do that with a slab. If your heart
is set on a slab, like most of the others said, rough in your plumbing
feeds and cap them on both ends. It'll be easy to tie into them later.


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