Thank you everyone, your responses are very much appreciated. I've always been nervous about neglecting the weight of the wall and soil over the heel when I design basement walls so going from a 6' wide footing down to 3' or 4' would be new territory for me.
I like this recommendation, although...
Thank you everyone for your thoughts. I have attached a couple of images below to clarify a couple of points that were asked about.
UPDATES
- The garage slab will be tied into the wall with dowels as shown in the updated sketch.
- No, the theater room slab will not be monolithic with the...
Hi everyone. I have a couple of questions on this foundation wall I am designing that separates a basketball court and a higher theater room in a home. See the drawing below for relevant dimensions and design criteria. I have read all the previous threads I could find on this topic but still...
I like this and I wish it was possible, especially in residential. I feel that there are a number of things commonly done and assumed in residential work that cannot be proven (roof diaphragm shear going over peaks and through valleys out to the shear walls, knee braces on exterior columns...
Thanks for your comment. The garage wall is fully backfilled on the opposite side up to the slab. Could it not be said that this additional pressure is transferred to the soil on the other side of the wall?
Well that right there is one of my hang-ups on projects like this. I'm not aware of any analysis tool that could determine how much the stairs are helping out. Which to me, leaves only one option: Design the full length of wall as a 7' tall cantilevered retaining wall without any bracing. When I...
Hi all. I got a call on a retaining wall that someone is installing to access their basement. As shown below there will be a set of stairs down to the basement. One side of the stairwell is a new retaining wall, the other side is an existing 7' tall foundation wall below the garage. Apparently...
Thanks for your input. I told the owners that I think the wall should be CMU and they're not happy. Apparently some other houses in the neighborhood have walls just like this one and they were built with 2x stud framing and a standard strip footing below. They can't understand why the wall needs...
Ok, but in the case of any basement wall that is backfilled there will be flexure. So I'd say that it's confusing that a basement foundation wall should be designed using minimum reinforcement from the ACI BEAM chapter rather than the ACI WALL chapter. ACI Chapter 11 (WALLS) does mention that...
Yeah...and one thing I was thinking about is since, unlike a concrete wall that retains soil, the lateral load on this wall could come from either direction. So I was wondering where I would put the rebar in the wall, and if the wall should be thicker so I can put rebar in both faces.
Hello fellow engineers, this residence I'm working on has an open patio with jacuzzi where they want to have an exterior partition wall (wood framing) to make the jacuzzi area private. This wall is freestanding as it won't be braced at the top by any roof framing. Further, they want the door in...
The same could be said of a basement wall with restraint from a joist floor system at the top too, right? If so, then all concrete walls that have soil behind them should have .0018 as the minimum vertical rebar, and the 4/3 check and 200*bw*d/fy checks should be made?
And that being...
Hi all, I've got a question about minimum reinforcement in concrete walls. Per ACI 318-14 Chapter 11 the minimum ratio for vertical reinforcement = .0012 and horizontal reinforcement = .002. I was running a calculation for a restrained concrete wall (10' tall basement wall) in RetainPro and the...
Yeah, my intuition is telling me that there should be some rebar in the wall that ties to some dowels into the existing footing. PEinc, I hear what you are saying about usually not needing rebar due to dead load and the mass of concrete, but it seems that on many projects the underpinning piers...
Thanks everyone for the input, pictures, sketches, etc. I've learned a lot from this thread, and I hope some of you have as well. And I also hope it will help future engineers many years down the road. I know I've learned a ton of stuff from threads nearly 20 years old!
I wanted to post an...
There's no groundwater here to speak of. But if the owner has sprinklers or it rains then won't I need waterproofing?
Yeah, but I hope you see what I'm saying. If the owner has sprinklers or if it rains then any water that is up against the existing wall will make its way down the wall, down...
Ah, I was thinking the blindside waterproofing would work with Option B and C, but not Option A. With Option A I'd think the waterproofing would have to extend up the exterior side of the existing footing and wall, which would require excavating the exterior face of the wall - which would...
Oh gosh...now I'm thinking I should not take on this project...
So something more like this...
Ok, so waterproofing on Option A?? Membrane on the inside of the basement that goes down to a drain in front of the extended toe? Membrane on the exterior (which would require digging around the...
Appreciate all the responses. I've got three options here that have been proposed that we're considering. Obviously not a finished product but I think they give the general idea of what's been discussed.
As bookowski mentioned, I don't think we're going to look at using tiebacks on this...
