WestendorfWeek 3COLLAPSE My experience with footings is mostly for residential, commercial buildings “warehouses”, and piers. Most of the work was done in areas we knew, but we still tested the soil...

My experience with footings is mostly for residential, commercial buildings “warehouses”, and piers. Most of the work was done in areas we knew, but we still tested the soil type to determine the dimensions and depth the footings needed to be. If we were doing a add on garage then it was a shallow footing to pour the slab on to. Basements we used was on footings with drain tile around the footing to help with the ground water going away from the footings. Commercial buildings were always a little bit trickier. With all the construction traffic, digging, and supplies being moved around one had to pay close attention to the prints and stakes. Depending on the design of the building certain areas the footings and piers would be deeper to be able to hold the structures weight. This can happen also when we would run into areas with different soil classifications in certain little spots. Also with the commercial buildings we would put in a lot of combined footings for multiple columns. Keeping the footings straight and on target for big commercial jobs is utmost important, along with maintaining the proper depth to be below the permafrost line in the ground. Water drainage is also key and why you will see the big factories and warehouses have more of a slope for their landscape to help drain rainfall and groundwater away from their footings and retaining walls.