Hello Engineers,
I am a licensed engineer. I am looking to design a residential foundation for my parents new home and help them save money. The foundation will consist of perimeter footings with concrete masonry block foundation walls above. Within the foundation walls will be fill dirt on which is to be poured the slab.
House plans are from a licensed architect. Also, the bearing capacity of the soil is 1500 psf.
I have site inspected the ongoing foundation work with the development going on in my own neighborhood. Also, I have studied Chapter 4 Foundations of the 2009 International Residential Code and made note of the minimum design requirements.
My questions to everyone are, basically, are there actual design calculations or a methodolgy to size the width, depth, and reinforcement of the footers? Is there design equations or a methodolgy to determine the slab thickness and wire mesh reinforcement required? Or is residential foundation design more of an empirical approach?
I basically have my own approach which is to calculate dead, live, snow, and wind loads and load combinations per ASCE 7-05. From that I can have an idea of the loading on the perimeter foundation walls. Is sizing the footers a matter of checking concrete shear and soil bearing pressure? Do I treat the footers as beams and design for bending and shear? Is the slab just a concrete shear calculations? Or, is all of it from proven empirical methods, design tables, or traditional methods of success, etc?
Thanks in advance to all of you who may offer me guidance,
JAS34
I am a licensed engineer. I am looking to design a residential foundation for my parents new home and help them save money. The foundation will consist of perimeter footings with concrete masonry block foundation walls above. Within the foundation walls will be fill dirt on which is to be poured the slab.
House plans are from a licensed architect. Also, the bearing capacity of the soil is 1500 psf.
I have site inspected the ongoing foundation work with the development going on in my own neighborhood. Also, I have studied Chapter 4 Foundations of the 2009 International Residential Code and made note of the minimum design requirements.
My questions to everyone are, basically, are there actual design calculations or a methodolgy to size the width, depth, and reinforcement of the footers? Is there design equations or a methodolgy to determine the slab thickness and wire mesh reinforcement required? Or is residential foundation design more of an empirical approach?
I basically have my own approach which is to calculate dead, live, snow, and wind loads and load combinations per ASCE 7-05. From that I can have an idea of the loading on the perimeter foundation walls. Is sizing the footers a matter of checking concrete shear and soil bearing pressure? Do I treat the footers as beams and design for bending and shear? Is the slab just a concrete shear calculations? Or, is all of it from proven empirical methods, design tables, or traditional methods of success, etc?
Thanks in advance to all of you who may offer me guidance,
JAS34