Raising the Level of Land

Chaps,

I've noticed that a lot of people raise the level of their land, before construction, by two/three feet or more.

How long would you leave the new earth to settle before building, over two years or less?

Over 1 full wet season is the norm westerby.

My understanding, here they don't even wait one good wet season. Usually they start building 6 months later, after they have watered the land down, let it dry, several times. They run a big roller over it to quickly settle the land. This of course isn't the best way of doing it and the land hasn't really settled enough to build on it. I'm not an engineer but did read something on it. They were build new housing on base, once the land was cleared, and leveled, they waited 5 years before building on it.

Pop's

if you pile the building which is the norm on newly filled land , waiting time of about 5 minutes. basically the house is built on stilts , but they are under ground on solid earth, usually between 4 and 6 metres depending on the fill level . cost in the region of 1800 / 2100 baht per pile, average 3 bed house between 22 to 26 piles needed.

saint wrote:if you pile the building which is the norm on newly filled land , waiting time of about 5 minutes. basically the house is built on stilts , but they are under ground on solid earth, usually between 4 and 6 metres depending on the fill level . cost in the region of 1800 / 2100 baht per pile, average 3 bed house between 22 to 26 piles needed.

OK, I'm unsure what you mean, can you explain further?

westerby this is what saint is talking about..


But, personally I do not agree with his claim that this means you can build on filled land straight away. You need to let the land settle & harden so that you do not get 'gaps' around the beams that tie these pillars together.
As pops says you can shorten the 'curing time' with use of heavy duty rollers.

Thank you, Bob.

This may be a better picture.
The first set of parallel lines you can see between the two pillars is cross beam that sits on the ground. The second set are another cross beam that the floor sits on. The area between these two beams is then filled (brick, concrete blocks, what ever) & cemented. So if the ground settles after you have built it is going to look pretty dam strange....


p.s. you don't have to have the second set of beams, you could build the floor directly on the first set - depends if you want the house raised above the landfilled level or not...

BobHelm wrote:This may be a better picture.
The first set of parallel lines you can see between the two pillars is cross beam that sits on the ground. The second set are another cross beam that the floor sits on. The area between these two beams is then filled (brick, concrete blocks, what ever) & cemented. So if the ground settles after you have built it is going to look pretty dam strange.
p.s. you don't have to have the second set of beams, you could build the floor directly on the first set - depends if you want the house raised above the landfilled level or not...

OK, Bob, I see what you mean, thanks for that.

Pops and Saint, thank you....

bob and westers, that drawing is of a pad foundation , which is only suitable for established ground , not filled . to do this foundation, they dig down to about 1.5 metres lay a concrete pad which includes the rebar for the pillars of about 60 cm deep. 60x60 . so you basically have a 60cm cube of concrete with the rebar embedded in it for the pillars sticking out of the ground. a pilled foundation is similar , but underneath this concrete pad you have 200 cm square reinforced concrete pins driven into the ground by machine to a depth of between 4 to 6 meters depending on the depth of your land fill . these pins are so deep that they are in solid clay , not affected by water in any way, and the house is constructed the same way as bobs drawing with the concete pad attached to these piles, but with only 1 floorbeam , and the pad only needs to be 1 m from the surface not 1.5 and basically sits on the piles . the only thing that actually sits on the ground is the wall between the underside of the floor beam and the ground , but you can even leave that open if required as it serves no structual significance , just makes it look pretty .

Thanks for that saint. Must admit that is new to me. Is this the system they use on the large estates???

to my knowledge yes bob , i live on hansa and because the land fill is about 3 metres deep , they use 6 metre piles which are driven to 1 metre below the surface , making the bottom 7 metres deep in total .

a bit over the top saint for wooden style thai house for the inlaws i wonder who financed it (me ponders)

The style of pillar I showed is exactly the same as used on wooden Thai Houses. Although much older properties would have used wooden pillars driven into the ground rather than concrete.
The floor level would also start about 2 meters above the ground level rather than at ground level.
This enabled a cooler area beneath the house for living in during the heat of the day. Traditionally this area was also used for the safe keeping of livestock at night.
Thai ingenuity, just in case anyone thought it didn't exist...

Build on any thing you like and as soon as you like, the term used is Bored Piers, or driven piles, the depth of the piers if the fill has not been rolled vibrated compacted in layers of 300mm max, supervised by a qualified person , and the fill is clean, no composable matter, will depend on the soil type to start with, if you got a swamp and you roll fill compact the fill to 5 metres, then thats good, but you still got a swamp underneith,

The bored piers, if the soil will allow boring and not allow the soil to collasp into the hole, is usually the norm for domestic jobs, if the soil is to wet then driven piles are used

http://foundation-specialists.com/bored ... ge%202.htm