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I know you’re ready to build your home, you’ve gathered all the money required to start off the project and now you’ll like to know where to begin isn’t it? You also know that the most appropriate way to begin a construction is to excavate site of all topsoil in order to make way for the foundation. But along the line, what is actually the meaning of a foundation? How would you define a foundation?
Construction Foundation
The term foundation is defined as the lowest part of any building that ultimately comes in contact with the soil. it is the lowest part of the building. The reason why foundations are necessary is because they support and transmit the weight of the building including the live and dead weights to the subsoil without failing.
Foundations as a very serious component of a building requires a serious care when being constructed. The depth has to be appropriate and well constructed in order to ensure it is right for the building. Aside from that, i would also like you to understand that the choice of a foundation for a building totally depends on the choice of the architect and the results obtained from a laboratory soil test.
What Are the Types of foundation you can encounter on site?
The type of foundation you’ll encounter on a site would totally depend on the nature of the soil that is found on site and the load to be supported by the foundation. A foundation could be the simple strip footing or a complex and more reliable pile foundation. The foundation type to be chosen for a particular structure or building largely depends on the loads to be transmitted and the receiving soil strata and must satisfy the following requirements
Requirements for a foundation
The factor of safety against shear failure of the supporting soil must be adequate
the settlement should neither cause any unacceptable deformation or damage nor cause cause interference to the function of the structure.
Having stated the two requirements above, it therefore would be necessary for the bearing capacity to be determined through some Geo-technical means or procedures before the commencement of the design for the foundation. However, for a relatively small building, the structural engineer may use his discretion or experience to choose a suitable foundation for the structure.
Now What are the importance of a good foundation to a building structure?
One of the most importance of a good foundation it enables the transmission of loads to the ground in such a way that the bearing capacity of the ground or soil is not exceeded. This once again requires the proper determination of the strength of the soil. It may not be easy to determine the accurate value for soil bearing capacity, but it is easier to determine the load or weight of the structure.
Importance of foundation for all structures
There is need for Construction foundation for any structure since it is the only channel through which all the loads from the super structure are transmitted to the sub soil.
Here are the importance of a foundation for all construction
1. a good foundation should not break under load, when distributing the combined load of the super structure to the footing of the foundation and also to the sub soil.
2. it is important for foundation to resist attacks by sulphate and other deleterious matter found within the soil
3. A foundation should be firm enough not to be destroyed by the root of plants or trees
4. It should not be affected to a great extent by the presence of water or moisture in the soil
5. It should be able to resist settlement which would impair the stability of or cause damage to the building
Now i hope you have understood a little about a construction foundation…
Please share this content with others in your engineering field as it would help them know one or two more points
