cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Foundation Chicanery Almost done with the subfloor now. I might finish after work today. Certainly by sunset tomorrow. It is very gratifying to stand on. Apologies to anyone horribly bored by long, technical descriptions of construction details. Because that is what will follow here. I have an engineering problem that I need to sort out and writing is all down here is my best way of doing that. Some people do their best thinking in the shower or by drawing sketches. Personally, my better ideas tend to emerge through the process of writing. The whole thing is getting much more stable with the subfloor on it but I have even bigger doubts than before about the stability of the post foundation as it stands. I will be building a new pair of beams to work side by side with the existing ones this weekend. The question is whether I'm going to plant the posts on another set of 6 of those deck blocks as I had been planning. I'm starting to doubt this whole system's wisdom with this particular variety of block. There is just not a solid enough connection between concrete block and wooden post. With a post higher than 4 or 5 inches, there will be visible wobble and that wobble obviously gets more pronounced as the post gets higher. In this case, the posts are about 3 feet high. Problem: I have to keep this thing on what can be rationally defended as a 'non-permanent foundation' in order to avoid running afoul of building inspectors for not having gotten permits and all that. But I feel like I do need the stability of a permanent foundation for a building on 3 foot high posts. One solution would be to get sneaky. The pyramid shaped concrete blocks have a 4x4 shaped pocket for the post end to slip into. What if I chiseled that pocket deeper and deeper such that it went all the way though the bottom? Then I could use 4.5 foot posts that went *through* the deck blocks, 18 inches into the ground and would then be footed on a few inches of gravel and secured by a large ring of concrete poured around the post into the hole. The deck blocks would in effect become dummies. Anybody looking at them would have no idea that the post went into the ground. My second solution would be to manufacture my own more stable version of the deck blocks. I would make them wider and heavier, with steel anchors set into the top of the concrete as it set. I have at least 4 such anchors handy. Those anchors have a 'J' shape that hooks firmly into the concrete as it sets and then the top of the anchor is threaded such that you can bolt a post or other piece of wood firmly to it. This could be far more stable than just slipping the end of the post into a pocket. The third option would be to use a masonry bit to drill out a hole about 1.5" wide and 5 inches deep into the bottom of the pocket of each deck block. Insert those steel anchor bolts into that pocket, prop them upright and then pour just a very small amount of concrete into each drilled out hole. Both this and the first solution carry the risk of accidentally breaking the concrete deck block in the process of trying to drill or chisel a hole through it. Option the 4th is actually a combination of both 1 and 2. This would be to put the posts in the ground on proper buried footings but slip each post through a cinder block as I do so. Then have the cinder block sitting on the ground after the hole has been filled in. Place some gravel under it and then fill the voids of the cinder block with concrete. It would then *look* like a half-assed, home-made, non-permanent footing that would allow me to avoid the onerous fees and regulations that I wish to dodge. But in fact it would be a sturdy, safe post foundation anchored properly to the ground.Thiswould be better than either options one or 3 in the sense that I don't have to deal with hours of chiseling or drilling carefully through each deck block trying to get the hole just right without breaking the block. I've already got some cinder blocks around. It would just be a matter of digging holes and mixing up a few buckets full of concrete. I could knock the whole thing out in maybe 3 or 4 hours, assuming that I had the concrete on hand already. Which I don't, but I could always pick some up during lunch tomorrow. I think I have my answer there. The 4th option represents the solution that is inexpensive, effective, and requiring of a minimal investment of labor. 11:19 - 2008-03-13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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