On 21/06/2014 9:42 AM, Steve Cottrell wrote:
On 21/6/14, Bill, discombobulated, unleashed:
In my part of the world, those walls would have to be floated because
our foundations move so much here. All of our house supports have to
have screw jacks on them to allow for lengthening and shortening as the
basement floors move up and down.
Is this from subsidence? Surely can't be earthquakes...
We live on the bottom of an ancient lake bed. Dig down about 6 feet and
you will find an expansive clay that goes down another mile or so. When
the clay gets wet, it expands and houses actually lift slightly. The
large floor surface moves more than the footings however. Interior walls
in our basements have to be floated at least an inch and a half around
the perimeter to as much as 4 inches in the center of the basement of a
large house.
It's only been in the past dozen years or so that the construction
industry has figured out how to build a stable basement in this area.
Most of the basements here have horizontal cracks in the walls
destabilizing them and require steel C channels attached to the floor
joists above and buried in the concrete floor to keep the walls from
caving in.
This is just about the stupidest place to build a city, and it turns out
that the reason it was put here was to enrich some local politicians who
owned land in the area and railroad magnates who were cooperative given
the proper amount of lubrication.
Twenty miles in any direction takes one out of the lake bed and into
more stable ground.
bill
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