PE Exam Practice Problem #54: Materials | Geotechnical - Vertical Stress

Welcome to SolvedIn6: Free practice problems for the Professional Engineering Exam! Each question is styled after those created by the NCEES, and is usually solved in under 6 minutes, which is the average time you will have to solve each question on the Professional Engineering Exam.
In this problem, we have a house situated on top of a layer of sand fill. This sand fill, in turn, sits above a layer of clay. Groundwater is present above all of the clay layer and part of the sand layer. We are asked to find the effective vertical stress at a given point in the soil profile.
Lets solve this problem:
First, lets find all of the stresses in units of pounds per square foot. The stress from the house is given directly. For the DRY soil layers, the unit weights need to be multiplied by the DRY depths. The saturated soil layers will need the unit weight of water subtracted from their unit weights before being multiplied by the saturated depths. Finally, simply sum of all of the stresses down to the point in the layer being asked about.
If you would like more Geotechnical practice problems, please check out the rest of the playlist which this video is part of.
Please note that newer versions of the reference manual may have been released since this video was recorded. The search terms are usually still correct, but the page numbers listed in the video will be different.