Cob Mahal Chapter 1: Good Boots - The Rubble Trench Foundation

[@lendseystinnett7213]

Awesome

[@d1m4d]

Nice clear explanation of the whys and hows. Thank you! Planning on doing a similar foundation in Scotland. Cheers

[@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini]

Awesome! Hope your foundation goes well and please don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions.

[@permasystems]

Great video! Looking forward to seeing the progress.

[@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini]

Thank you so much! There's a lot more to come that I'm very excited to share soon.

[@mikewagenblast5454]

Good boots indeed. Great job in sight preparation and the environmental goings on within the site.

[@cratersofthemoon]

Looks like I’m your 100th subscriber! Wishing you well!

[@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini]

Yay!!!! Thank you for subscribing! Wishing you well as well!

[@charlotteeolsen8397]

Oh you made a French drain

[@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini]

Exactly!

[@yawjunior]

hello! First thank you for this. I run into your video as I am educating myself on alternative foundations and just recently learned of the term rubble foundation. A few questions :)... Is the burrito part an additional piece that you added as a french drain (learning new things!), for extra security given it's a foundation for a home that may not be on the highest ground? Or is it an essential part of a rubble foundation in general? For example lets say you were building on high ground or making an exterior perimeter wall, would you have employed the burrito ? With buying things like landscape fabric, gravel, pipes, did you still find the cost of all those materials much less than if you had utilized a cement foundation in a similar configuration? Certainly much more eco friendly!

[@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini]

The "burrito" (and by that I mean a perforated 4" pipe surrounded by drain rock surrounded by a "burrito" of landscape fabric) is essential to a rubble trench foundation. The purpose of the landscape fabric "tortilla," if you will, is to filter the small clay and silt particles so they don't clog up your drain rock. A concrete foundation wouldn't provide the benefits in drainage and stability to our dry stacked stone stem wall we wanted, so we didn't bother comparing costs, we quickly decided we didn't want a concrete foundation.

[@yawjunior]

appreciate you@@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini

[@kirkcoulter1180]

Any updates? Where are you at now? Interested in knowing if the plans for this were approved by the local athorities. Most are not hip to this type of construction.

[@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini]

Updates coming soon! Thankfully, we are outside of the city limits, so no permits required.

[@danknugz7605]

You should not have used woven geotextile in your burrito. You should have used non woven for more water flow. Youre not going to allow enough water to pass through your system with woven.

[@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini]

Thanks for the input. Seems like woven is working out for us after 3 years. Every time we have a big storm, our outlet pipe is flowing like a fire hose.

[@trevorvanzuydam8115]

Would the plastic not act like a pipe anyway, making the actual pipe unnecessary?

[@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini]

The only plastic in the rubble trench IS the pipe. The landscape fabric is porous to water, but keeps the dirt out of the rubble trench.

[@trevorvanzuydam8115]

@@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini I see now , thank you!

[@andrewsackville-west1609]

Im jealous you can get away with a rubble foundation. In my area, you can't get anyone to sign iff on it, anymore, due to seismic requirements

[@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini]

Rubble trenches are pretty resilient when it comes to earthquakes, as they're somewhat self-healing when combined with a dry-stacked stone stem wall. When the small gravel hearting is really packed into the joints of the wall, it can shift into an even more stable configuration after a seismic event. The problem comes when you try to put a concrete grade beam (which is definitely not self-healing) on a rubble trench.

[@andrewsackville-west1609]

@@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini right. The problem is permitting a structure... finding an engineer to stamp a rubble trench or a building department to approve one without an engineers stamp is basically impossible, where I am.

[@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini]

@@andrewsackville-west1609 Hopefully some municipalities will come around to rubble trench foundations. They've got a very long track record, (much longer than concrete!) but they're definitely not in the mainstream right now. Good luck with permitting!

[@michaellinnebur7694]

Wait just a minute.you did this in the most free country in the world.the one were you need a permit a architect drawings etc.

[@naturallivingwithmikeandnalini]

We're lucky to live in a rural area where no permits are necessary.