A Step Forward ?

On Monday I called the Structural Engineer to find out the progress with the quotation and the necessary re-design for the foundations. I was promised an update last Thursday and, as reported in a previous blog, it didn't come. It didn't come on Friday either. Monday's conversation revealed that he had accomplished nothing! Fume, Fume, said he was waiting for me to get back to him regarding compacting and other such excuses. I stated that was not my recollection of the conversation and that I was waiting for a quotation and a redesign so as to enable the ground work contractors to carry on with their work.

He insisted that yet another site visit was required and following the visit, he informed me with many caveats how much the re-design would cost along with the statement that it would be a raft and that he might be able to have something by Friday, which is what I requested whilst talking to him on Monday. On past performance something by Friday is highly unlikely.

The raft is likely to be 0.5m thick, is subject (usually) to settlement of about 25mm, which can lead to differences in floor levels internally. How this settlement is catered for in the actual structure of the building I do not know, nor how long it takes for this to take place. Hopefully the former will not involve ugly expansion strips of gunge.

It also appears that my previous calculations of Ground Bearing Pressure are irrelevant. Apparently the 34.6 kN/m2 from the original calculations, pertain to the ability of the retaining walls to do their job, and are nothing to do with the weight of the actual building on the ground.

Finally, some friends who live locally are having similar problems with their project. They cannot have a raft solution so are going for drilled piles instead (up to 8m deep). I still wonder if piles really are unsuitable for our work, but Jan tells me not to get hung up about piles as they are the last resort. Oh well, I am assured that a raft will work, so I guess it will :-}