Fix my Basement Kansas City
Recently, we found a very unusual subgrade under a concrete garage floor while preparing to install our 3 King Piers. A very unusual subgrade of sand, a total of 4′, was used as fill or something that apparently did not work.
Does sand compact?
Sand does compact but why did it sink or fail? Most of the time the floor is sitting on 1/3 of the footing. In this case, the footing was 4ft below the garage floor, thus the floor was what you call a floating concrete floor. The footing on this job only sank 1/2″ according to our laser level, therefore this will be a very slight 1/2″ raise of the footing, but the problem remains is the 4ft of sand that was under the section of concrete garage floor that was removed.
King Piers Solid Advice
My suggestion to the owner would be to remove the sand (4ft of it) haul it off and put it back on top of the dirt that is under the sand spread throughout the broken 1′ diameter chunks of a concrete floor that was removed. Because the floor dropped at the center of the garage to the outer wall 3″ this large existing broken concrete floor can be recycled to good use in this case giving the sub-grade added STABILITY!
King Piers Methodology
The King Pier System does not require drilling any holes into an already unstable foundation wall and footing. Most footing I encounter while installing the King Pier System at people’s homes is inadequate in SIZE & STRENGTH. Most Footings are only 2′ in width and 3.5″ to 8″ in thickness. This is just plain and simple NOT a GOOD DESIGN for supporting the outer weight of the home. These footing will fail and do fail to set in very solid compacted soil. Many times we get down to the footing and the soil is so hard that an electric chisel hammer is used. It makes most wonder how did the footing sink when the subgrade is so hard.
Answers
The answer I have come up with is only 2 things.
1) Mother Nature. The earth is always moving and without proper rainfall, it will crack 1/2″ to 3″ in some dry drought-stricken Midwest areas.
2) The Footings are just too small in size and inadequate in strength (refer to city code; in most cities or towns building a FOOTING per City code does not require High Strength Concrete). Generally, a low Strength 3000 PSI Concrete is used with Fly Ash recycled into the concrete. Fly Ash in concrete lessens the strength and durability of the concrete. The King Pier System always uses 4000 PSI, High Strength Concrete with 100% Cement and 0% Fly Ash, Reinforced with Fiber Mesh. The King Pier Concrete is a High Strength very expensive concrete.
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