Choosing the foundation for your home, you should consider the characteristics of the site on which it will stand. First things first, you need to contact your local geodetic service. It can enlighten you about the soil on which you will build a cottage. The fact is that heaving soils can cause a lot of trouble, and closely located groundwater will not lead to anything good.
Professionals will be able to give you detailed recommendations on what kind of foundation for the home should be used. But because of the high cost of this kind of work, they are not suitable for everyone. That is why we will consider the grillage foundation, characterized by high reliability and versatility of use.
However, when constructing a frame cottage, you can do with the simplest light foundations. For example, light columnar bases fit perfectly in this case. But if you plan to build something more serious, then you can not do without a quality foundation. For example, for a high-quality log or brick house , a grill foundation is just right.
Piles for it can be made of metal, concrete or by a combined method. They differ not only in weight, size and shape, but also in installation methods. In the simplest version, you can generally use specially prepared logs in general.
The only problem is that over time, the tree inevitably loses its operational qualities, which can lead to cracks not only in the foundation, but also in the supporting walls. Therefore, the pile-grillage foundation (the price of which is rather high in this case) is best done on the basis of reinforced concrete structures.
Depending on the required weight distribution of the house, the piles can be located both uniformly (along the perimeter of the foundation of the house), and in a “bush” way, supporting the most dangerous areas. The grillage is good in that it allows even on unstable soils to make an integral monolithic foundation pillow. Piles can be completely planted in the soil, you can leave their tops on the surface of the soil, and you can significantly bring them out of the soil. In any case, the grillage foundation will reliably cope with its task.
The methods of its installation can be very different. The easiest way to use ready-made driven piles of reinforced concrete, which are made directly at the factory. But for private housing construction they are used extremely rarely, since they have to use heavy construction equipment. Therefore, the drilling method is most often used. In this case, a well of the required configuration is dug, directly into which the finished reinforcement is lowered. But the tape-grillage foundation, in such a reliable way, is again not always possible to be built, since not everyone has the opportunity to call a drilling rig.
In this case, bored piles can be used . A pipe of sufficient diameter is driven into the ground, into which a little concrete is poured. After the first batch has hardened, it is removed and a new portion is poured. But the easiest way to complete the grillage foundation is using screw piles. Due to the fact that they are made of high-quality metal, screwing them into the ground is not too difficult.