Before you start pouring the foundation and even designing a house, you need to carry out exploration activities. They will allow you to find out such important indicators as soil moisture on the site, the level of groundwater, the depth of soil freezing during the cold period of time, as well as determine other parameters that allow you to choose the right type of foundation for the building. The foundation is also poured under the house only after calculations have been made regarding the future load on it. Both of these types of work are entrusted to specialists.
Most often, strip foundations are used for private houses. Using the example of this type of construction, we will consider the basic principles of this work. You will also need to calculate (at least approximately) how much it will cost to fill the foundation. The price depends, first of all, on the size of the future building. The type of soil and the material from which the walls will be made are also of great importance in this regard. For example, on rocky ground, it is not necessary to deepen the foundation too much, and, consequently, its final cost will be lower. Samethe same goes for light walls, for example, frame ones.
Filling the foundation for the house begins with marking work and digging a foundation pit. After the latter is ready, formwork is installed in it. When building small houses, you can use any durable material at hand for its manufacture. But most often the formwork is assembled from wooden panels. To do this, special support racks are installed in the pit. After mounting the shields, they are additionally fixed with spacers.
In this case, you need to make sure that the distance between the shields around the entire perimeter is the same. Before installation, the horizontalness of the bottom of the pit is also checked.
After the formwork is installed, sand is poured on the bottom of the pit with a layer of 15 cm. Further, reinforcement is attached to the formwork. In the manufacture of this metal structure, it is not recommended to use welding, since the junctions of the rods in this case can quickly begin to rust. It is best to use a special binding wire. The next step should be the actual pouring of the foundation for the house.
To do this, you will need cement, crushed stone (which can be replaced with rubble), water and special tools. You can, of course, use the old-fashioned method (trough and hoe) when mixing concrete, but it's best to purchase a modern concrete mixer.
With herusing the technology of pouring the foundation will be as simplified as possible. And the concrete mix itself will turn out to be much better. Lay it in the formwork in layers. In the event that you decide to use a rubble stone, then first 15 cm of concrete is laid on the sand, then stones are placed on it. Then again concrete, then stones, etc.
It is necessary to ensure that the distance between the cobblestones and the formwork is at least 5 cm. After pouring the last layer, the surface of the finished foundation is carefully checked for horizontality. To do this, use the building level. On this, such a process as pouring the foundation for a house can be considered complete. Concrete hardens during the day in a warm period of time. After this period, it will be possible to remove the formwork. For the next two weeks, if the weather outside is dry, the foundation should be moistened with water from time to time to prevent cracks.
Concrete finally hardens in about a month. Only after waiting for this period, you can start waterproofing work and building walls.
