Why Buildings Need Foundations

What the heck is a foundation and why do all structures need one?
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If all the earth was solid rock, life would be a lot simpler, but maybe a lot less interesting too. It is both a gravitational necessity and a source of job stability to structural and geotechnical engineers that all construction - great and small - sits upon the ground. And the ways in which we accomplish such a seemingly unexceptional feat are full of fascinating and unexpected details.
Practical Engineering is a KZbin channel about infrastructure and the human-made world around us. It is hosted, written, and produced by Grady Hillhouse. We have new videos posted regularly, so please subscribe for updates. If you enjoyed the video, hit that ‘like’ button, give us a comment, or watch another of our videos!
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This is not engineering advice. Everything here is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Contact an engineer licensed to practice in your area if you need professional advice or services. All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes.
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[@PracticalEngineeringChannel]

🏗 New to the channel? Check out a playlist to see more videos like this one: kzbin.infoplaylists 📺 Get a year of CuriosityStream AND Nebula for 26% off, just $15! www.curiositystream.com/practicalengineering 📝Sign up for my newsletter to keep track of everything I'm working on here: practical.engineering/email-list

[@npnkc]

How much nebula cost without curiosity stream

[@jerrellbevers6071]

A fellow Central Texan!!

[@jdmagicmusic]

when early on you mentioned that earth below foundation can compress &/or settle over time, i immediately thought of the infamous leaning Millenium Tower, which settled (unevenly) quite rapidly! another great vid, thanks!

[@kyoto325]

Thanks. I hope it was my message you saw that made you make this video lol. Also I’d like to see more into the drilling foundations !!

[@custardcatcher5195]

whats the best before date 100 year old water pipe lines! will adding arsenic to our water fix the sludge buildupon the pipe walls?

[@ocko8011]

Here's an idea for another video: landfills. What kind of engineering goes into the design and construction of landfills ranging from Type 1-3 to tailings and impoundments. Permitting and operations would be neat to cover. What kind of systems go into making these facilities safe and environmentally friendly? What happens when landfills run out of space or encounter waste they weren't designed to handle? How will new PFAS and PFOS regulations change the waste industry?

[@slypear]

+1

[@AndrewHelgeCox]

Is there anything done to make the waste easier to mine for valuable materials by future generations?

[@prajwalj9024]

+1

[@ocko8011]

@@AndrewHelgeCox Yes. There have been a few regional waste conferences along with various pilot programs that have looked into and conducted feasibility studies concerning resource reclamation from municipal waste landfills. Resource extraction from old tailing facilities have been ongoing for decades. Revenue vs cost is the driving factor, for the most part it is still cheaper to mine virgin material.

[@BGTech1]

Yes

[@lovegarbage]

I know a civil engineer who often told me that, 'I'm always telling architects that their creations need to touch the ground somewhere for purely structural reasons.'

[@quintessenceSL]

Know an engineer who comments "If you build it large enough, it'll float" referencing sci-fi cities built in the clouds (and a sculpture project I want to do).

[@marschma]

And then, after you designed your building with ground contact, your supervisor comes, looks at it, goes "hmmmm", and turns it upside down. "Looks much better than, dont you think?"

[@youkofoxy]

@@quintessenceSL Or if you throw it fast enough, a rocket engineer may add.

[@quintessenceSL]

@@youkofoxy Funny enough, it was a gent with a degree in thermodynamics now turned to designing buildings.

[@anhthiensaigon]

lol reminds me of the game youtuber Real Civil Engineer (yes that's actually the channel's name)

[@user-bi6sx7ul3o]

What a beautifully done kzbin.infoUgkxYGamVaHfdHiPlAQaLa7zkwR02OKpGYDU ! The instructions and the photographs are brilliant. It is thorough and genuinely informative. Ryan got another winner! No one does it better!

[@1945d18]

As a civil engineer who was thinking about building a house, I interviewed a builder locally and asked about getting geotechnical information on my site before building. Interestingly he said not to worry they had built many houses in that area and we did not need to do any investigation. Suspicions aroused I inquired about testing the foundations before finalizing the footings and he told me his foreman knew what to do. I had seento many foundation issues in homes to not want to have this happen to me so I decided right then that now way would I hire this guy. I even told him that if he was concerned about the extra cost I would pay the cost of the testing both prior to and during construction. It may seem like overkill for a house but to me the extra attention to the foundation would pay off in the future. Learned some hard lessons with soils in my time including a seam of fat clay that nobody caught until the clarifier floor cracked. Love your channel.

[@tomast9034]

you are building it for yourself ...i overbuid everything so i dont have to repair it every five minutes. i even did my bed from 140mm x 140mm logs .

[@seanlevoy9446]

I have been a construction manager for 25+ years and have been involved with the construction of thousands of homes. If you engage a large builder; Pulte, Meritage Lennar etc., a geotechnical engineer is involved at both the development (streets, utilities etc.) and at the construction phase. Not all lots get tested. The results from the tests are sent to the engineer that designs our foundations and he incorporates this data into the design. In my area it's all clay so plasticity index is the governing factor. I'm surprised he did did not say that he uses stamped drawings to follow. If you are in a municipality it's almost 100% that the governing body will require a stamped drawing to get a permit. Adding soils tests will be a few thousand and if they are not using stamped drawings, walk away. Good luck.

[@scRUAM]

Do you mean a soil test for the foundation engineering? Every house should require one I’m surprised he didn’t want one.

[@seanlevoy9446]

@@scRUAM Yes a soil test. It depends upon the situation. In large developments each section will have several borings which is a good representation of the soil in the area. For example a 25 acre tract may have 10 borings but 100 houses will be built. The borings are sent to a lab. The results are sent to the engineer and the foundation will be designed and stamped. Having one for every lot many times is not necessary.

[@ASM31237]

We have a family construction business, soil tests aren’t necessary when they nearby properties have already been tested. The builder is right in saying that there was no soil testing necessary if they’ve built houses in the same area. Identical foundations we don’t test since they’re all the same and have been tested before. An inspector comes every time either way to test the concrete. Foundations are important and you’re right in asking the builder. We’ve done plenty of repairs on foundations as well and understand that.

[@Groaker]

Thank you for making engineering so interesting, understandable and accessible!

[@kelador80]

Well engineered reply!

[@dantheman3022]

Real engineering is a lot more in depth than this though !!! hes just giving you a simplified summary at best !

[@Groaker]

@@dantheman3022 Yes, that's the point though.

[@usingThaForce]

You don't get why buildings Need foundations?

[@Groaker]

@@usingThaForce Of course I do.

[@meltedyakkystick3891]

I always wondered why houses in cold areas typically have basements while houses in hot areas usually don't. I didn't think it had to do with the necessities of building a good foundation.

[@silverforest4682]

All the pipes have to be below the frost line. Base ments allow us to bring those lines in pretty deep.

[@zapfan7029]

In the arctic most buildings are on top of piles that go down in the permafrost and have crawl space to insulate the frozen ground from the warmer house.

[@scottcarr3264]

I was intrigued by this as well, but when he explained the effectts of freezing on foundations it all fell into place.

[@treeguyable]

Plus, here, in Eastern NC ,where only a few houses are built with basements, the water table is just too close to the surface. Cold or hot climate, bad idea.

[@ifp748]

Usually it also reflect how close to sea level u are

[@LorileiSuesHonestReviews]

I have to say you were my dad's favorite thing to watch. He passed away in April of 2021 and was in hospice his last few months of life. I would come over daily to care for him and we would always watch your channel. Now watching your videos reminds me of that very special time I was blessed with, to spend with him in his last months. Thank you for your videos.

[@PracticalEngineeringChannel]

Thank you so much for sharing. I wish peace and healing to you and your family.

[@LorileiSuesHonestReviews]

@@PracticalEngineeringChannel yes you're very welcome. Thank you for your kind words.

[@Liam_Patton]

God bless you both.

[@LorileiSuesHonestReviews]

@@Liam_Patton God bless you✝️🙌

[@bravefastrabbit770]

@@LorileiSuesHonestReviews Was it the GCI? (genetic code injection)

[@PAcifisti]

Here in Finland the bedrock is really close to the surface in pretty much the entire country. Usually just a meter or two deep, sometimes even less. This makes most foundations really easy to do. The most difficult job often is cutting away the bedrock to make room for the house / foundation.

[@ImranZakhaev9]

My grandfathers house in Newfoundland, Canada was built on top of the bedrock. The front door becomes the basement, with the exposed rock as the floor in the back of the house. The whole house is just build around the rock!

[@congchuatocmay4837]

And in other places the water table is only a few cm down, anyway at least you can rest assured.

[@mrphoto_fix]

@B Babbich on the rock

[@spicybaguette7706]

In the Netherlands where I live, piles are actually used quite commonly, even for residential buildings, because of the weak surface soil

[@leflavius_nl5370]

Plus, piles are usually used here because we build whole blocks of houses in one go. Usually 5-20 houses are built on one single "foundation complex", sorta. The piles are driven for the whole block and concrete is laid on top, for all houses. That is economically viable. If you're building a 20 houses in Texas, all spaced 50 meters apart, it's gonna cost you a lot more. Also a lot of ground in the Netherlands is bog (veen) or soft clay (at least where i live, our whole town and all towns around us are), and is still shrinking (inslinken?), so it'd be kinda dumb to put houses on that without deep piles.

[@MikkelHojbak]

Yeah, it's a natural consequence of so much of the country being below sea level. The extra moisture in the ground makes it much more prone to settling when pressure is applied.

[@claymountain1300]

Er is altijd een Nederlander in de comments haha

[@animex3183]

heerlijk dat hijen #SoundtrackVanDeRandstat.

[@sampickett3843]

Piles are also used for housing developments in south Louisana

[@Aedar]

This actually answered a lot of questions I had about "typical" american houses you see on TV and movies with crawlspaces. As I live in central europe with winters that can get very cold, I doubt there are any houses that just stand on wooden legs, as having any type of relatively open space under your house is very ineffective when you're trying to heat up your house during winter...

[@elDoober]

just FYI, homes like this with crawlspaces really predate the suburb boom of the 1950s, homes these days really come in 2 flavors. Slab foundation on ground (like the raft one) or basement space with house on top. also not all houses are the same in the US due to climates, regional geotechnical differences, earthquakes and hurricanes, storms.

[@jayhill2193]

@@elDoober of course they're not all the same, but the stereotypical movie US home has a gloomy crawlspace for various horrific creatures to hide and pull their pray into ^^

[@capttelush539]

@@jayhill2193 I live in the US and I’ve honestly never seen seen a house with a crawl space like his. Here in tornado country you need a basement if for nothing else but safety.

[@agate_jcg]

What's "typical" varies a lot within the US. Crawl spaces and slab foundations are extremely common in the south and the Pacific coast, but houses in the Northeast and north central states almost always have full basements. The map at 8:40 shows the story pretty well.

[@MrNicoJac]

@@capttelush539 How do people in tornado country look at brick houses? Do you think they'd be able to stand up to the storm, or would they just be torn apart and make it even worse? (cuz now there's bricks flying through the air) It seemed insane to me as a kid, having heard the story of the wolf and the three piglets. But as I grew older, I realized that one layer of brick may not really help if your neighbor's roof beams are coming your way at 100 mph 😅 Anyhow, keen to hear the perspective of someone on the ground, plugged into that culture! :)

[@ps200306]

I've got a science background but don't know the first thing about civil engineering. I find this channel endlessly fascinating... pitched at exactly the right level to help the non-specialist appreciate the awesome practical science that goes into real-world engineering. Clearly there is a vast amount of omitted detail behind your summaries, Grady, but that makes me appreciate your didactic style all the more -- it's not easy to make a specialist subject accessible to the lay person. Definitely one of my favourite channels in my "love of learning for the sake of it" category. I also now know why my house is built on a raft foundation. There's literally nothing underneath except fifty metres of glacial sand dredged off the bottom of the Irish Sea by a marauding glacier and dumped onshore during the last ice age.

[@Vinlyguyx420x]

I always remember what my design studies teacher told me in high school. “The most expensive and important things in a home are the roof and the foundation” I’m pretty sure he was getting his roof done that year 💰🔥

[@seanlevoy9446]

One of my professors in college told the class, "always hire a good painter, they make all work look good, and a good roofer, they keep the water out."

[@tlangdon12]

It's also the reason that being "out of the ground" is a milestone for any building project. With the foundations being so important, completing them is a real milestone.

[@Mic_Glow]

If the walls collapse a good roof is no good....

[@johnlary8792]

A good hat and a good pair of boots.

[@googiegress7459]

Kids are more expensive by far.

[@EliasProbst]

I'd be interested to hear about historical aspects of engineering. For example: my hometown in south-western Germany has a lot of really old houses - some of them close to 900y old, but still fully used for housing and renovated to modern infrastructural and energy standards. Most of them are timber framed and have been built long before "modern engineering" was a thing - yet they withstood for so long and might for quite some time to come. The way they were built might be part of this secret, e.g. many of them moved together with their sinking foundations, have visible (but apparently not critical cracks that were simply filled during renovation, leaning walls, crooked floors rising 20-30cm in extreme cases from one side of the house to the other.

[@petrkubena]

Don't forget about survival bias. You see only those, that had the right combination of construction, soil below them, lot of repairs over the years and a lot of luck. 99 out of 100 are long gone.

[@ayrendraganas8686]

@@petrkubena which would not make the reasons why they survived for 900 years any less interesting

[@Falcrist]

I was thinking of many of the stone structures in the UK that have been in use since time immemorial. However, many of these structures have basements that likely serve as decent quality foundations, and many have seen many repairs over the years as stress cracks have appeared due to settling. Now such structures are probably resting on exceptionally well-settled soil.

[@veryboringname.]

As Grady mentions at 6:04 - engineering is a job of balance and constraints. I think before "modern engineering" was a thing, people didn't know how strong things needed to be so they were overbuilt to make sure they lasted. Only those structures that were overbuilt survive till today. With modern engineering, we now know the limits of materials so we build things to suit the budget and expected lifespan. We can definitely build buildings that will last 1000 years, but not many people would be willing to pay for that.

[@LAG09]

It's probably much the same reason why you see old roman structures still standing today. A lot of buildings and other structures used to be built as solid slabs that move around on a shifting foundation as one big piece rather than something that gets pulled apart. Those roman structures that still stand today as those are basically all just massive single lumps of concrete without reinforcement (so no oxide jacking when the rebar inevitably starts to rust). They were built that way because that's the only way they could be built back then and used way more material than what a modern equivalent would.

[@Rayden440]

Thank you for mentioning the "must be cost effective" part of engineering. Many people look at ancient structures like the Roman Colosseum and think we can't build stuff to last anymore. That's simply not true! We can build structures to last thousands of years, but why do that at all? The cost would be astronomical (we don't use slave labor anymore).

[@michaelmoorrees3585]

Plus, the Colosseum, was government funded, so really deep pockets on that one.

[@Handles-Suck-YouTube]

Not just government funded, but more or less a government PR/vanity project. Even deeper pockets!

[@anidnmeno]

Note to self: commission some slaves

[@EebstertheGreat]

It's also just too soon to say how many of our modern structures will last centuries. Not most of them, obviously, but it's not like most Roman structures did either.

[@lpk6372]

People trying to get slave labor back... Either that will succeed or we get robots and ai...

[@150flyer4]

A coworker of mine with a bad foundation used a never ending collection of cheap bottle jacks to slowly support his house as it crumbled away. Hundreds of jacks and a few years later, there was literally a foot or two of free space all around. It was one of those ingenious situations that caused simultaneous amazement and head shaking!!

[@worldchangingvideos6253]

Was his name Jack as well?

[@KaylaJoyGunn]

Seems like it would be cheaper to jack up, add a block of wood, and release the jack. That's the easiest temporary solution and doesn't require spending thousands on jacks..

[@leeg5678]

@@KaylaJoyGunn why not expansion foam?

[@JesseSargentSoG]

​@@KaylaJoyGunn When you add a jack, it needs to be regularly tensioned. No doubt, many of his jacks no longer contacted anything solid whatsoever.

[@JesseSargentSoG]

​@@leeg5678 don't fall for that scam. Expansion foam is a bandaid, and besides being a mess as well, that's about it. Also, any foundation wgich can be jacked up by hundreds of jacks is not the kind of thing that expansion foam is made for. Maybe a section of sidewalk.

[@punditgi]

Grady gives us a solid foundation of knowledge, as always!

[@raven4k998]

or does he?

[@billminckler6550]

Clever. 😂

[@leandersearle5094]

That was a pretty concrete pun.

[@dhawthorne1634]

You'll probably appreciate this story: In my senior year of university, the school decided to add a parking garage in the middle of their downtown campus for the following year. They started construction 2 weeks into the fall trimester and kept going until just after that first round of finals. They had brought in a diesel hammer to drive the piles. Not only did you get the diesel explosion every 3.5 seconds but it was followed by a tremor so violent it was shaking the mortar out of the brick walls at the exterior side of every classroom. Grades dropped so drastically the school had to curve the grades for every class in the two adjacent building by 35% to keep the scholarship student's GPA's high enough.

[@rodchallis8031]

GO Transit in Toronto took over some old rail lines, and for some reason they drove piles rehabilitating the old track. The vibration damage in "The Junction", not to mention the degradation of everyday life while that long project took place was visually evident.

[@Asummersdaydreamer14]

Congratulations on surviving that; it sounds like hell

[@leandrog2785]

Was it actually explosions, or just hammering?

[@FortuneRed55]

@@leandrog2785 Some hammers use diesel fuel to add an actual explosion to each hammer action, so I’m assuming actual explosions.

[@whoever6458]

Geez, hadn't they heard of this time of year called summer? You'd at least think that they'd reserve such obstructive noises until then. The really sad thing is that all you students presumably paid full price for classes where it was clearly harder to learn the material because of the persistent cacophony from construction. That's just terrible!

[@Br3ttM]

My parents' house has a basement, but the ground is 7 feet of sand on top of a layer of clay, so the foundation was put on top of the clay. This means the preferred path of groundwater is through the basement. The original owners also increased the size of the house during construction, so 1/3 of the house doesn't have a basement under it, and that part sunk over the decades.

[@Hirosjimma]

well... that sucks

[@RealJohnnyDingo]

Oops

[@newunderthesun7353]

As this video demonstrates, you can put a basement anywhere you want, as long as you're willing to build it right. But most people aren't willing to pay to do it right.

[@eclogite]

I live in a 104-year-old house, and we have a "creek" that runs through our basement whenever it rains. We had several inches of water one year, so a small channel was dug along the uphill edge of the basement that captures the groundwater as it comes in through permeations in the foundation, and redirects it into the house's drain to the sewer. Pretty sure the foundation is on bedrock, as it's pretty shallow in this area. The base of our chimney actually sits slightly higher than the basement floor due to being on top of a small bedrock outcrop. Easier to build over it than blast or pickaxe it in 1918 I guess lol

[@scottcarr3264]

That is a case where re-engineering the design needs to happen, so the house doesn't tear itself in half.

[@Nibtarr]

I love that you can extrapolate why some parts in America have attics and others have basements through the information provided! Great video!

[@googiegress7459]

Places with much risk of flooding also tend to lack basements, sort of by tradition, although you will always see some in the worst places. And the decision to finish the attic and insulate, vs. an unfinished attic that acts as an insulating layer of air, is often just an economic decision. Same with basement vs. crawlspace.

[@illmaticpapii]

Awesome vid, i used to work as a non union foundation laborer and my boss knew a TON of stuff. Especially because he also operated our heavy rigs. I’ve been around pile driving, kelly bar drilling, caissons, and more as deep as 90+ feet. I already was pretty informed but you take it a step further, keep up the good work. Side note, i’m now an ironworker apprentice and i’d love to learn more about structural steel and bridges if possible. Thanks

[@amandajones8841]

This is the first time I've understood why basements are so common in the US (or at least, in US media) while being nearly unheard of in Australia. We have basically no frost line!

[@railgap]

True for large parts of the US, but, since it covers so much area, we have our high-water-level areas too, where basements have never been a thing, and graveyards are strictly for above-ground vaults! ;)

[@JeremyRobertWalker]

pier foundations in the northern U.S. can be very deep too down to bedrock, 40 feet even

[@CFEF44AB1399978B0011]

Lots of parts of the midwest get tornados also, and people like having a basement for shelter purposes out there.

[@periodictable118]

Also why every single house in canada, without fail, will have a basement

[@Reziac]

I'd like to see more of the specifics on how your house foundation gets rebuilt. Retrofits are a different challenge.

[@cgi2002]

I find it amazing that's even a thing that needs to be done. But then I'm in the UK, our houses foundations are structurally part of the house, you can't simply dig them up and replace them without basically demolishing large parts of the house. That said, you'll also likely never find a house that needs its foundations replacing (repairs aren't unheard of but usually due to a structural error or tree root growing into them) in less than a few hundred years, in many cases over a thousand. By which point, the house itself needs replacing/repairing more than the foundation. Does admittedly make it more difficult to access utility lines coming into your house, but since they aren't exposed to the outside at any point, it's rare for them to be damaged.

[@simonseal3836]

Stud Walls and other shoring elements can be used to support load bearing columns in your house and allow you to work on your foundation while it is rebuilt.

[@kazj1728]

@@cgi2002 I saw a documentary (DW or BusinessInsider) on the trend of expensive London townhomes that had massive subterranean basement expansions. They added 1-3 levels underground due to town zoning limitations on above-grade additions. The newly expanded basements though have problems; like the guitar player from Queen had sewage in his basement. Yuck!

[@Bird_Dog00]

+1

[@cgi2002]

@@kazj1728 yeah that is happening but even thats fairly rare, as it's expensive and requires very specific planning permission including the consent of your neighbours and you to have insurance incase you damage their homes as you are, by digging that out, essentially undermining their foundations too.

[@natemorlock2379]

I'm a piledriver (Local 196) and enjoy seeing videos that relate to my line of work. My whole job pretty much revolves around putting piles in the ground. More videos like this please! Thanks

[@rubenzxl]

Here in the Netherlands the soil is so soft, that we need 11 meters deep foundation piles even for small residential houses

[@FortuneRed55]

I live in Utah. Whenever the road gets wet (including I-15), the lane lines can become difficult to see, and traffic gets to play a game of everyone guessing where the lanes are. This problem is exacerbated by constant construction due to massive population growth and freeze-thaw cycles; every time a lane is moved, the old lines are painted over or ground out, and it can be very difficult to differentiate between these ghost lines and the real lines on the wet road, because they’re all just kind of less shiny bits among the shiny road surface. When I visited Oregon, however, it was a completely different story. The roads are constantly wet there, and the lane lines were extremely easy to see at all times of day and night. Even when the tabs that stick up from the road surface (we can’t have those in utah because snow plows will scrape them off) aren’t present, i can see the lines very clearly. I think they use some kind of paint with reflective material instead of just pigment, but I’d like to see a video about road paints and why it’s so crummy in Utah vs Oregon (hoping there’s a better reason than cost, because it’s really dangerous).

[@joshuaharper372]

In both Houston and Dallas I have encountered the same problem on freeways that have undergone numerous lane shifts during road construction. Even with reflective paint it can be hard to see which is the correct lane in wet conditions; we sometimes have to rely on the reflective bumps for that. But then we never really need snowplows...

[@dorvinion]

They use the reflective paint for road lines everywhere. I'd guess what happens in Utah is when the roads get wet the fine sandstone dust turns to mud, and that mud obscures the reflective particles in the paint. You also have a sort of sand blasting effect with sand and wind scouring the paint, and vehicles running over the sand particles as well grinding on it. Basically its a more hostile environment

[@storminmormin14]

Oh my gosh yes please

[@AlRoderick]

I always have trouble in well-lit urban areas in the rain, the shiny wet pavement reflects the streetlights and other vehicle head-and-tail-lights and there's just too many light sources, no contrast. It's not a problem when the pavement is dry and black but when it gets wet and shiny it effectively doubles the number of light sources. The paint used in street markings is retroreflective (a simple retroreflector made of glass beads embedded in melted plastic if I remember it correctly), so it preferentially bounces light back in the direction it came from and so looks brighter than other objects in the area when viewed in light that comes from near the viewer, like your headlights. This effect is cancelled if there's a bright streetlamp or a vehicle coming the other way whose headlights are bouncing off the road just as brightly as the reflection of the paint. When the streetlight hits the pavement, the water layer scatters the light in all directions but the retroreflective paint sends most of it back up towards the light fixture, and so less back to your eyes.

[@firesurfer]

The paint depends on where you live. Most northern lines are made with thermoplastic paint and covered with ground reflective glass.

[@jocaleb0236]

My great grandfather who was the definition of “handyman” built my home’s basement It was just sitting on wooden posts and he set his mind and dug out a basement himself Excavating the entire basement, putting up jacks to hold the house up on concrete slabs he poured himself It’s really cool He also built a bomb shelter down there haha, a small room with 18in concrete walls on all sides including the roof!

[@RealJohnnyDingo]

You should repurpose that as a COVID shelter, add in some HEPA filters and a toilet paper storage rack! Then your grandkids will have a good story to tell (and probably convert it to a climate change shelter or whatever the disaster fad of that decade turns out to be)

[@Andre_XX]

You never know when you might need that bomb shelter...

[@skilz8098]

@@Andre_XX Or an undisclosed grow room haha

[@solitude.5283]

I've studied mechanical engineering for two years and after watching your videos I can see similarities between civil and mechanical engineering. It's nice to brush up on the things I've learned. Thank you for making these videos, I enjoy them a lot.

[@sylvamadu3721]

Currently studying civil engineering and i've seen this stuff before, but getting it explained to you with visual and in-depth examples gave me loads of clarity. Great vid, really fascinating stuff, honestly

[@YouTubestopsharingmyrealname]

Grady, would you treat us to a deep dive into your experience with the foundation on your house? it would be interesting to see how you approached the renovation and the considerations that lead to the solution that you ultimately went with.

[@PracticalEngineeringChannel]

Not much engineering to it. Lift house. Replace cedar piers with concrete piers. Set house back down.

[@davidtyorke]

@@PracticalEngineeringChannel Lifting structures sounds like an interesting video topic. As a Chicagoan, I'm passing familiar with the topic and would love to hear more.

[@veryboringname.]

@@davidtyorke Here in Australia (and no doubt many other countries), some people literally move their house when moving house. The house would be lifted up and placed on a huge truck and driven to the new location. It's quite amusing to see a house on the road.

[@pulaski1]

@@veryboringname. Are you talking about a house _designed_ to be moved (a "trailer" in the US), or jacking up and moving a regular home? Both occur in the US, though the former is common for new trailers, and the movement of "used" trailers and regular homes is much rarer.

[@pufthemajicdragon]

@@PracticalEngineeringChannel Not much engineering to it? What size and how many jacks to use, where to place them, what to put under them, how high to lift the house, whether to move the house out of the way or work underneath it, what kind of concrete to use, how deep the new piers should go, whether to drive pre-fab piers or drill & pour them on site - all of those are decisions made by the engineer(s) working on the project. I agree that this would be a fascinating video for us to watch and learn from. I suspect most of these questions have "standard" answers, but I'd still like to learn more about them. But whether you do it or not, this video was great! Just like all your videos. Thanks so much for the work you do and time you dedicate to sharing your love of engineering with us!

[@MaebhsUrbanity]

It's interesting the aspect of cost and expected lifetime you brought up, which will be very different by area. For instance, here in the UK, most houses are at least 100 years old if not many and are expected to last for just as long. For instance, when we chose to replace our Victorian windows to double glaze we had the option of ones that should last 100 years or ones that should last 300, we chose the ones that last 300 as while we won't live here someone will and that will be minorly appreciated in the property value.

[@MrNicoJac]

Yes, thank you! Made no sense to not invest in a property, since all prevented maintenance basically gets tagged onto the sale price anyways...

[@agilemind6241]

@@MrNicoJac Depends, in NAmerica it is shockingly common for properties to be bought, the entire house torn down to the foundation and rebuilt.

[@JayGoldbergExists]

In desirable markets in the United States, the value of a home is assessed by comparing it to homes nearby that are of similar configuration (comps). This is all automated, there is no way for you to woo the appraiser by telling them how great your new windows are, and so there's really no appreciable premium in a hot housing market for better build quality on your home, so it is not worth making such improvements.

[@Scorpion008]

Yep, that topic also stood out for me when I watched the video and put into perspective how different the US housing market is. European houses are built to last at least 100 years. Hearing that a foundation has to be replaced after only 75 years and that that is supposed to be comparatively long was weird. Average length of house ownership doesn't really play a role because there will always be somebody else that will live there after you.

[@timmccormack3930]

I appreciate the desire to build for the long term, but 300 years for a window seems a bit long. :-) You'll want to consider how changes in technology may result in someone wanting to replace the windows before their service life is up, or non-repairable parts of the window breaking and requiring full window replacement even while the glass and vacuum is still good (e.g. little plastic parts of the frame). 100 seems very reasonable, though.

[@mattrussell6608]

Love these videos! Union concrete carpenter here and these videos are accurate from my experience but that’s just surface level knowledge and these videos expand on that to a point where I feel like I’m actually learning something on top of normal day to day work. Keep it up man. Love the info!

[@pianoman47]

Really great video! You are correct in saying shallow foundations have the potential for frost heaving in cold climates. One way we commonly avoid having to dig below the frost line is to place insulation around the sides of the shallow foundation, typically extending out as far as the frost line is deep. This acts like a blanket and allows the energy of the earth (or even the building's heating) to warm the footings while blocking cold air from reaching them from above. The downsides of this system include that they take up a larger footprint than the building itself, future maintenance around the building may be unaware that the insulation is there, and foam insulation isn't always cheaper than digging deeper. It's typically the client's choice what they choose to do.

[@freetolook3727]

When I had my RV and mobile home repair business, one of the biggest problems was piers under mobile homes sinking in mud resulting in doors and windows not opening and closing properly. I solved the problem by building piers on 2' x 2' square pieces of 3/4" pressure treated plywood. If stone was available, I put some under the plywood. On top of the plywood, I would build my piers by double stacking concrete blocks (no mortor) with scrap pieces of wood to cushion between the metal frame and concrete pier. All the while using a water level for accuracy. I never had a mobile home sink more than 1/4" and when I got done, all the doors and windows worked properly. It's all about distribution of weight spreading it out evenly. In that way, one pier doesn't have more weight on it and sink. The same principle can be applied to buildings just on a larger scale. Even tanks that easily sunk in the mud in WWII were redesigned with wider treads and wider axles to distribute their weight over more ground. And it worked!

[@pulaski1]

Starting out by basing your new column on plywood, even if pressure treated, seems like a temporary solution that only made sense because of the short expected future life of the trailer home that you were working on (under).

[@freetolook3727]

@Pulaski It's all underneath and out of the weather. I used the system under a mobile home that I used as a camp. It was under 20 years with 1/4" settling. The camp was destroyed by trees falling on it but the plywood is still good!

[@pulaski1]

@@freetolook3727 Ah, OK. In my neck of the woods (NC, USA), plywood lying on the ground would still be subject to ground moisture (solid clay in the central and center-west parts of the state retains moisture for _years,_ and can transmit it from below or sideways), water may run across the surface through and/or under perimeter foundation walls, and eventually the pressure treatment chemicals may dissipate enough for termites to attack treated timber.

[@elDoober]

@@pulaski1 as long as the ground under the mobile home is higher than its surroundings it will stay remarkably dry. I live in a rainy, wet climate and ive been under mobile homes that are either sand or concrete and they stay super dry.

[@clovislyme6195]

As a lawyer, in a trial, I once put it to an expert witness (structural engineer) that a certain ancient building had been built without foundations. His response was that foundations are where the building meets the ground, every building not floating in the air has them. They may not be very good foundations, but foundations they are nevertheless.

[@oldtimegames96]

Tbh, he says it's not a good foundation, yet that building has been standing for more than thousand of years. A way better record than many modern foundation.

[@clovislyme6195]

@@oldtimegames96 It was not quite so old, and not very grand, - just a farmhouse built sometime before the Napoleonic Wars - but it had given good service since then. I always enjoy dealing with expert witnesses, they usually testify in good faith and it can be fun learning enough about their discipline to question them. This one, though on the other side of the argument, was a very nice guy. His response to me was a gentle put-down, and I learned from it. Here I am, years later, remembering and telling the story.

[@oldtimegames96]

@@clovislyme6195 im not against experts tbh. All I'm trying to say is that a similar temple in India with no foundation (dug in the ground type) is standing for like 1000 years, and yet the base of the building would be called 'not good' by this person. I agree that we learned many things with our advancement, but should not forget the crazy solutions ancient people had to some of the problems.

[@clovislyme6195]

@@oldtimegames96 Oh I didn't read your original comment as if you were against experts - not at all. I think I understood you as you explain it again above. I was just adding a little extra detail.

[@oldtimegames96]

@@clovislyme6195 it's cool, as long as we keep it civil. (Pardon the pun, couldn't resist)

[@FutureSystem738]

Great video as usual, thanks. We bought a lovely roomy 1974 era house in a cul-de-sac in 1995 here in Australia 🇦🇺 The only problem: highly reactive clay soil and poor shallow foundations, very typical,of the era. We found lots of cracking and movement, especially when it was dry. (The previous owner had been pouring a huge amount of water into the yard to avoid cracking, and taken steps to hide the damage, but that was of course totally prohibitive for us as water is now metered and quite expensive.) We then spent over $30k having most of the house’s exterior wall underpinned- huge job and huge upset to the garden during the process. Now, 25 years later we still love our house but it still gets significant movement (mainly in the middle above the crawl space where it was prohibitive to rebuild foundations), and movement around door frames, and cracks in drywall.

[@amihaifreed8622]

I grew up in a small house that was built sometime around 1960 with an extension that was close in size to the original house. The soil around that house was definitely an expansive clay soil (I loved seeing the soil form cracks on top of cracks when it dried after a good rainstorm). I remember my parents looking into adding a second floor onto the house, and we had to dig down to investigate what type of foundation we had, to determine how we could support the second floor. My parents were told that the house could be sitting on piles that widen as they go down, passed the walls of the house. If so, we would have to use outriger pilings to support the second floor, about 8 feet outside of our house. There was no crawl space under our house (scroll spaces are not populer where I grew up), but I do remember that our sewage connection was a lined and covered chanal as opposed to a pipe. Anyway, once I left home, my parents no longer had any need for a second floor, so it was never added.

[@jumar360]

I'd like to see a video about how your house foundation was repaired. Did they lift your whole house? What are the new piers made of?

[@sgjahn]

A few years back, I had to travel to Singapore for a month to oversee the construction of my company’s new plant. Since the structure was being erected on reclaimed land, the piles were “drilled” and then filled with concrete. The depth of the pile was determined by taking soil samples every 5 meters (if I recall correctly) and visually identifying the soil type. Once the recorded numbers added up to an appropriate skin friction, the concrete was poured and work began on the next pile. In order to keep water from infiltrating the hole that was being drilled, a heavy polymer mixture was pumped in as the hole was being drilled, similar to mud during oil exploration. When everything was said and done, large concrete blocks were brought in to perform the test load on the piles. Could you possibly do a video illustrating this process as I found it very fascinating and would like to learn more?

[@umar7151]

Is there any job available in your company sir? Cheers ✌️😁

[@QuantumPolagnus]

That sounds like drilled shafts, to me. How big were these drilled piles?

[@sgjahn]

@@QuantumPolagnus It ranged from 24” to 36” IIRC based on which building, which part of the building, and where machines would be placed.

[@dicksonteoh]

It is bored pile with maintained loat test (MLT) conducted on it

[@cronx1337]

Its funny you were sent to 'oversee' this construction, and you are just now learning about the technique on KZbin. I'm guessing your company did not send their best to this country.

[@jacobsteinebronn2966]

9:02 “As described above” that’s a wonderful little insight into the script-writing process that makes me appreciate the work that goes into these videos. (“Above” instead of “earlier”)

[@shteebo]

Grady, you have an amazing knack for making complex issues interesting and digestible. I've learned more about our infrastructure from your channel than any other source. Well done.

[@IanZamojc]

Here in Toronto, I've heard the buildings are built with enclosed underground levels that act like the basement example and actually allow the buildings to "float" in the earth. Apparently, the glaciers that crossed the country millions of years ago pushed the crust down and it's slowly rising back up like memory foam. I'd be curious to see some coverage of this.

[@agilemind6241]

This is true, pretty much everyone in Southern Ontario has a basement of some sort. The ground is up lifting but very very slowly, the freeze-thaw cycle is a much bigger issue for structural stability, what with silty-clay rich soils, lots of snow, and 50+ freeze-thaw cycles a year. Not to mention since most of the waterways were heavily influenced by glaciers they tend to be less mature than other places so more prone to moving & changing.

[@IanZamojc]

@@agilemind6241 Yeah, I wonder how much the frost cycle matters to a sky scraper though with 6 floors below the frost line.

[@franciskolarik6802]

That's interesting. I had never heard that one might have to engineer buildings with isostatic rebound taken into consideration. Huge swaths of that land should rise equally, but i suppose there could be differentials in certain situations. It does give us little eathquakes around the Lakes.

[@Prash1c]

Good to know! Thank you!

[@sikhatheist651]

Glaciers weren't that long ago and they still exist in the North. Toronto would have had a 4km high glacier over it as late as 6 to 10 thousand years ago.

[@alanbutler7712]

New video topics: Castle foundations at different areas of the world and how do they differ in order to last so long? Also, foundations of European cities that have allowed them to last centuries. Foundations in waterlogged locations, (New Orleans, Versailles, Netherlands, etc.)

[@TreyNitrotoluene]

N'Awlens floats on voodoo.

[@HansLemurson]

Well, as I recall, the earlier castles burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp.

[@EvelynNdenial]

@@HansLemurson but the third ones stayed up. so clearly the best foundation is ruined castles.

[@tomast9034]

all castles in our country are build on solid rock on the highiest possible place. same have hillsides used as walls.

[@alzmcfluffy]

Hi, I'm a first time viewer and learned quite a bit from this video, thank you! After your comment about piping which enables or calls for (?) the creation of basements the light went on. Being from a small Northern community way up in Canada I always thought the main reason for basements was to ensure a strong foundation for the house itself to help eliminate as much shifting as possible between the freeze and thaw cycles but I learned that piping and water flow is a much more salient feature. Thank you!!

[@jeremiahschaefer9771]

I spent the first 7 years of my working life learning construction, from framing to bulkhead building, so this was an awesome episode.

[@michaelroy1631]

the simple connection between frost line and foundation depth makes geographical trends in basements so natural. I've always lived in the northern US, and basements were a simple fact of buildings.

[@axelusul]

In construction after "site investigations" and Structural Engineering in residential development the profit can be lost in the ground. I worked on a prestigious site with £1/2 million homes. After test drilling the boundaries only in a site in a vale toward the local River, heads rolled as "running sand" was found on 1/2 of the site. Homes had to be rafted or on ring beamed deep piles. One home had contiguous piling for a small bungalow. Costing nearly as much as the building built upon it. What ever the site and conditions do your homework, local history, mine searches, speak to older locals and do a "thorough site investigation" of the geology of the ground below. The site made a massive loss, but if not identified those homes would have become probably dangerous to live in or lose the value of the property. Even buying second hand check and do homework, for foundation problems can destroy any plans of making a fixer upper a home.

[@markfryer9880]

I worked on a house here in Melbourne Australia where the Geotechnical engineers had mixed up the soil reports for two houses in completely different suburbs. The house I worked on was designed for a two storey house on stable ground when it was actually built over a filled in small creek feeder gully. This meant that the footings for the raft slab were insufficient and when I arrived on site I came across access holes cut through the floor slab for new concrete piers to be poured after hydraulic jacks had relevelled the house. The house was surrounded by scaffolding so that brickies could repair the damage to the brickwork from when the house started sinking under it's own weight. The other part of the story was that the other house which sat on stable ground, had been effectively over built with deep concrete pile footings that didn't need to be there. All of this trouble was caused by the mix up in the soil test results between the two sites. Naturally, this situation tested out their professional indemnity insurance policy and would have seen a subsequent review of their premiums. Mark from Melbourne Australia to prop

[@axelusul]

@@markfryer9880 I remember a case where a farmer's son built a home on a piece of land near to the farm house. I believe they rafted it as near many trees where some were removed. Then the house over a "short time" began to settle a few millimetres, then centimeters then meters!. They had only built on a piece of land where a hundred years ago all the cow and mud refuse was scraped into the hole. Over time they created a great sponge, then as trees grew about the site the crust became solidified by the trees roots systems. The house ended up sinking until the rehydrated crust and house reached equilibrium. That was just under the eaves leaving a nice red pan tiled roof structure as a talking piece. As you described even when trying to do due diligence, human error is a factor and pig ignorance. The photographs as it settled were funny but frightening. I don't think they believed they had made their own liqui-faction model. LOL

[@Sparemaniac]

My little town has a single underpass going underneath a railway bridge. 12 or so years ago the town decided to widen and deepen the underpass to allow transport trucks to fit through. I can’t recall whether it was one or two contractors that went bankrupt on the project, but it quickly turned into a nightmare. Turns out the railway ran beside a forgotten creek bed, and the underpass was dug in a soft, boggy part of that creek. They kept digging and digging looking for solid soil, wound up undermining the railway bridge and destabilizing nearby buildings. They even found an old corduroy road buried deep under the roadway. In the end they had to drive piles sideways to stabilize the bridge, then completely rebuild the roadway foundation. Took years thanks to our long winters and short construction seasons.

[@edcox1630]

@@markfryer9880 wow, that was embarrassing and costly!

[@microcolonel]

It'd be interesting to hear about the questions that come up when trying to build a whole structure to a single lifecycle target (i.e. 100 year building, without significant excess in the foundation, overstructure, finishes, etc.).

[@mahmoodfozan1821]

This video is amazing! You are one of the best people to explain dynamic and complicated processes/concepts on YT and very easy to follow! Please do not stop!

[@user-dv4hv7zx9k]

You mentioned some foundations being resistant against earthquakes and my mind immediately went to Japan, a country known to experience earthquakes. Could you do a vid specifically on how buildings in Japan - or any other country with known earthquakes - are built with this in mind?

[@somethingelsehere8089]

I like this - please do. Also, I've seen piles removed in Japan - can't imagine how this would work.

[@SD-tj5dh]

I remember seeing something about ancient Japanese temples where the wooden structure above just sits on stone slabs. In earthquake situations the beams just slide around on the slabs and it keeps the structure from coming under excess stress and collapsing. I thought it a marvellous idea.

[@jdaayhan5159]

When in school for masonry a vaguely recall the story of a library - I think it was in Mexico City - that sunk below grade due to poor soil quality of the basin (not because the architect didn't calculate the weight of books) and they were forced to build steps down to the entrance. But as numerous tall buildings were built around it the hydrostatic pressure they exerted caused the library to raise back to and finally above grade requiring steps to be built up to the entrance... I've looked periodically for the name of the place and exact location but I've not found it. (Part of me is still convinced that it was invented as an example of the effects of hydrostatic pressure... but nearly 2 decades later and it sill haunts me.)

[@AaronOfMpls]

Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts), actually. I remember it from _Why Buildings Fall Down_ (Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori, 1992). Not sure how true it is either -- the Wikipedia page mentions the building has sunk 4 meters since it was built, but says nothing about it rising.

[@jdaayhan5159]

@@AaronOfMpls Thank you. That's actually a viable candidate as an inspiration for the story. Even if it's not a factual representation; it's still more then I had before.

[@timmyturner327]

Reminds me of how the pillar in Mexico City has had to have steps built up to it because of soil sinking.

[@saintsatellite]

Grady, maybe I'm insane but from your very early videos to now you seem so much happier. It's really nice to see! Wishing you all the best for 2022.

[@thesweetone]

I am so glad that you add in cost-effectiveness to your videos as so many engineers that I know ... Don't even consider it.

[@viesers]

I am watching your videos on Nebula.. And found it kinda disturbing how they end.. They stop quite abruptly at makes me feel like there has been some playback error or video is unfinished. And then I watch this video, where there is a smooth transition to advertisement, which serves as a good otro... Would invite you to think a bit more about outro of your videos for nebula, so they don't just seem cut off.. Best regards

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

just reuse the end sequence from Abed's film about his family in that Community episode

[@RandyK1ng]

I just love encountering foundations and posts made from timbers, especially rough-hewn that came from the backyard. First thing I do is poke it with a screwdriver to see if I need to get out of the basement pronto. Thanks for the awesome explanations.

[@alejandroblancofelix4537]

It would be awesome if you made some videos about sound in structures. You know like the influence of the structures (shapes, materiales etc) on how sound works in a given space. For example, theatres or cinemas have specific shapes and materials in order to deliver the sound more equally to each person in the venue, or in home studios where you normally don’t get to decide on a lot of the structure to have a better sound but you can’t make changes to achieve a better sounding space. I am a engineer in Music Production studying in Mexico City, and I love you videos even though it’s not my field, it is very interesting to know so mucho about the spaces we live in. Hello all the way from Mexico

[@ollebo]

I recently watched The Foundation on apple tv, and it contained a disappointingly low amount of structural engineering.

[@LiviuGelea]

Your comment is severely undervalued

[@paulhaynes8045]

Funny as this is, I bet there are plenty of engineering nerds out there who would have exactly this reaction!

[@abbofun9022]

It was based on a solid story though. . . . .

[@thesoupin8or673]

I would love to learn more about the engineering behind marine structures, like harbors and piers and stuff. And I love learning stuff about boats, but I guess that's not really civil stuff. And ooh, how about a video on big lessons we've learned in engineering, like conceptually? I'd love to see stuff like "here's what they used to teach, but then we learned that soil actually behaves THIS way, so now we teach it like this." Also, thanks for all your work! This was really interesting.

[@20mm1]

Check out the army corps manuals on coastal engineering!

[@Back2Zack]

Also check out the Hyatt Hotel concrete walkway disaster. Sometimes we know about things but we don' have laws for them until something bad happen!

[@user-on9rs3yx3s]

I dont know how but im learning more about civil engineering from you than I did during my entire civ eng degree. Amazing work Grady! I love this channel!

[@michaelfranz6937]

I am not close to an engineer but find building and other construction projects interesting. What I especially appreciate about your presentations is that they are understood ny lay people like me. I really enjoy your channel...thanks!

[@FedericoSpada13]

What about a video describing the work done on your house from a practical point of view? I have no idea how you could replace the foundation without destroying the build on top of it...

[@jasonreed7522]

Something my parents had to do last summer was replace the ribbon and sill because the deck was attached to it directly and years of water damage rotted it away and the deck litterally fell off the house. What we did was lift up on the floor joices in the crawlspace with a hydraulic jack and then secure it with 2x6's, While this may not have been OSHA approved it was cost effective and we followed the basic rules for pinch points (don't stick you fingers under the loads) in case the temp supports gave out dropping the house about an inch. Basically you can lift a house up off the foundation enough* to do foundation type work by just lifting up on the floor joices and/or other structural beams if you a gentle, make small movements, and generally try to avoid differential movement. *Enough may mean a few millimeters to not have loading on a pier or it may mean pick it up and set it on a trailer to be hauled down the highway.

[@suspicionofdeceit]

You do it piece by piece, using a hydraulic jack to slightly lift each beam as the post is removed and replaced.

[@waggy401]

It can be done using the same technology as house movers. Steel beams are placed under the floor joists or beams. Then use hydraulic jacks to lift up the entire house. (After disconnecting the utilities, of course.) the process is more complicated if there is an attached garage on a slab, but there are ways around that.

[@sanderd17]

I had no idea you guys replaced foundations. Coming from Europe, where our buildings are brick, stone or concrete, replacing a foundation is nearly impossible. And yes, we do have old houses where the foundation is insufficient. Especially on building expansions that were first meant as a temporary shed, but got "upgraded" into the main building. These expansions sometimes sink into the ground and crack walls. The only option is to tear down these expansions, and rebuild them from scratch.

[@storminmormin14]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints managed to do it for a couple of large old brick buildings in Utah and I’d love to see a video on it.

[@Ivander_K]

your comment got stolen by one fucking bot, report him

[@sanderd17]

@@storminmormin14 yeah, it's only really done for buildings with a big historic value. And even then, I've seen a project where all stones were taken out, numbered, and put back in the same place again.

[@Solarbonite]

It depends on the area. In Florida we have concrete foundations. Probably due to hurricanes. But we don't replace them, typically we jack them up and flood the space with more concrete from what I understand.

[@IAmGameAddicted]

@@Solarbonite this is how its done by companies in georgia

[@T.E.P..]

did u do a new review of this .... great great vid. Love all the vids. Thanks for doing a thorough vid of all these issues. BRAVO

[@QuantumPolagnus]

A couple ideas for further foundation videos: 1. I'd love to see more about the methods for modeling/predicting the bearing capacities of driven piles. I've seen Wave Equation Analysis reports (I'm a construction engineer in the transportation sector), but I don't really know much about the process that leads to one of those reports, and I'd love to see your take on the process or any other methods you'd like to cover. 2. It would be interesting to see you cover drilled shafts - their specific advantages/challenges, and any interesting or extreme real-world examples you can think of.

[@woodylinder338]

Nice job explaining. What might be very interesting for a subject is the concentrated load on a runway for an airplane landing, and how it dissipates through the thickness of the concrete. The shear cone of a concentrated loading vs uniformly distributed. Static vs dynamic loading.

[@markfryer9880]

Of interest on the subject of airport runways was an article I read in a magazine about heavy equipment. The concrete runway was being replaced due to wear and because they couldn't replace the concrete runway with a new concrete runway and have it set and cured in time for the first flight landing in the morning, the decision was made to replace the concrete with very thick layers of asphalt. All of the work was being done at night time within a very tight operating window. I think that the airport may have been in Germany, but details are fuzzy. Mark from Melbourne Australia

[@AaronOfMpls]

@@markfryer9880 Now I'm curious about that. Was it like a mill-and-overlay, where they ground off the surface and then laid a new surface on top?

[@Finfie]

lesson of the day: an explosion is slower than a hammer But seriously i love your videos! Could you make a video on which tests can be done to check various structural parameters, where a priori calculations and so on are not feasible/accurate? I never thought about the fact that it could be so complicated to check for static load and am now wondering which other parameters of a building project might be deceptively hard to gauge.

[@thomasrogers8239]

I caught that too

[@stromlo]

You can tailor explosives to be as slow or fast as you need for the particular application (within reason). Can't really do that with mechanical weights. Edit: That is to say you can make it faster or slower than the hammer, it's not that it is inherently slower.

[@1224chrisng]

@@stromlo is it possible to dampen the hammer's force with a rubber coating? or is the weight of the hammer too great for that

[@somethingelsehere8089]

@@1224chrisng That would reduce the effect of the hammer.

[@sanjaymatsuda4504]

@@stromlo What about a hollow hammer filled with metal spheres? Are those slower than solid hammers?

[@Ras548]

I was always fascinated for how long foundation engineering was a thing in human history ever since I inherited my house. My foundation and cellar are roman, made out of bricks and a sort of concrete with a still working well in the middle of the cellar. Despite its age, which should be around 1800+ years, we, nor my grand parents, never had to maintain anything. Which didn't stop us from getting it structurally checked tho. Engineering done right I would say. Great video on that topic 👌

[@riogrl324]

I’m not a civil engineer BUT lately I’ve been super interested in how buildings are built! All of the contractors involved and safety procedures. These videos are great!

[@KevinOConnell00]

This is strange to me as Halton region in Ontario, every house has a basements because our frost depth is 42". I forget that houses can be built like this. Great video!

[@djsomeguy]

No, it's 48" not 42"

[@MrNicoJac]

You guys are weird. Humans are measured in feet and inches, but frost depth in lots of inches? Might as well use millimeters then 😂

[@ph11p3540]

Albertas frost line is 60 inches depth below grade.

[@LukeBunyip]

As an Antipodean, I've always wondered about you North Americans, and your basements. Now I understand why they are prevalent for you, and non existent in the Land of Fire and Flood. We're more likely to raise a house up four metres or so...

[@tomast9034]

@@MrNicoJac unite your units....inche, feets or yards dont mix it up. in metric we go all mm or meters . at least fractions are not used that often. :D:D:D:D

[@vana328]

As a geotechnical engineer it’s so cool to see us get some love from your channel. Keep up the great work!

[@Craig.Coates]

I am so glad that youtube exists for people like yourself. So brilliantly delivered and so interesting in every part. Thank you

[@simonettacola7481]

I'm a professor of geotechnics. I appreciate your videos because you are able to explain difficult concepts in easy words... Continue, your is a good job!

[@Galactis1]

As an add on to this video, I wouldn't mind seeing how and what methods you decided to use/ go with to shore up your home foundations. Whether it was the same material or go with a more traditional semi concrete and wood combination. Just thought it might be something others would be interested in to know how it turned out? Just an idea, Great video and this subject can definitely span a few episodes. Thank you!

[@homomorphic]

My mom lives near a river delta and the government determined that paying the small number of home owners to raise their houses would be a lower cost than building a levy to protect them, so my mom's house was raised at a cost of $136,000 (of which the government paid $108,000). The entire house was lifted and then a basement built under the house and then it was lowered back. This took 4 months during which my mom had to live elsewhere. Was a huge PITA as you can imagine, but now the house is high enough that it is immune to flooding because the flat land around the house, that the house is now above, is 2,000 square miles in size (so essentially it has infinite horizontal capacity).

[@ChesapeakeBay89]

I am a mechanical engineer, but I am still surprised and impressed by some of the civil engineering that is around today. I live in Richmond Virginia and we have bridges going across the James River that were built before the Civil War and are still in use today. Surprisingly despite even 20 foot floods in my life time, those same bridges still exist after more than 250 years.

[@veramae4098]

Something about the history of foundations. I live in the house my Grandfather built about 80 years ago. A few years ago I had the basement waterproofed (and insulated). Occasional but rare water leakage, but it was also damp and smelled of black mold. The contractor dug down inside the basement walls to lay drains (among other things). I was told later they were surprised to find footings. Most houses built at that time just had the walls resting on the ground (clay around here). The footings were too small, they told me, for best use, but at least I have footings.

[@KJamesMellick]

I love the piece of still bark covered cedar as a pier. My family has a cabin on piers like your house, and one of the piers is just an 85 year old cedar stump, still rooted into the ground.

[@JomirBrands]

Interesting video! It amazes me how my country the Netherlands builds so much on the soft ground! With the right technique, of course, this is possible

[@andrewalexander9492]

Yeah, I saw a photo recently from the Netherlands where vacation homes had been build on tiny island strips whcih were remaining in an area where peat had been harvested. Peat, not being a very strong soil, it made me wonder what kind of foundations had been used.

[@cherylm2C6671]

Considering how much work goes in keeping out the North Sea, it got made possible!

[@mrnnhnz]

Very interesting thanks. I'd happily watch more videos on foundations. Would particularly like to see videos on building in such a way that the building is highly earthquake-proof. I live in New Zealand, and we get quite a few earthquakes here, (fault-lines, Pacific 'rim-of-fire,'...) Large buildings can use base-isolators, but I understand they're not appropriate for most homes as a residential house is generally not heavy enough to withstand heavy winds while sitting on base isolators, which, after all, are designed to protect the building from horizontal forces (more than vertical ones, at least that's my impression.) I've seen some solutions. Also, none of the piles/foundations in this video had cross-bracing. It seems to me that this would be a lot harder to install, but would provide significantly more strength in an earthquake (or even a large storm.) And in really tall buildings you have tuned mass dampers. Though they're not directly related to foundations, they really are when you consider the job of the foundations. Another thing about foundations I'd like to hear is you were saying that very tall buildings (skyscrapers) can't spread their weight over a large area, so are forced to go down deeper instead. I wonder if a skyscraper (especially a comparatively isolated one, if such a thing exists,) could in fact be okay with much shallower foundations - IF it could be built on a foundation with an enormous footprint.

[@patrickmarcoux8661]

Thank you Mr. Hillhouse for another very insightful video. I have enjoyed your previous offerings, yet I think this is one of your best. Really great work.

[@wpherigo1]

2.5M subscribers! Wow. What an excellent intro to Civil and Mechanical Engineering. Wish something like this was available 40 years ago when I was going thru engineering school at Texas Tech. Keep up the good work!

[@zarakkhan9223]

wish you tube had these 3 years ago when i was doing my civil engineering. now after the pandamic youtubers are more creative and there is almost every uni course available for free

[@AdamZovits]

@@zarakkhan9223 3 years ago Grady was already doing videos on "why bridges move", reinforced concrete and water hammer effects.

[@fluffy_tail4365]

Here in Europe we mostly use basement foundations everywhere and in general foundations of houses are assumed to last as long as the house itself, even for single owner villas

[@ChillinGames]

i ran across your book on amazon and it mentioned your channel... now i cant stop watching them!! lol Awesome job man, thank you for giving me something to binge!

[@msmazzo]

I needed this video, since my VERY old farmhouse has foundation failure and is in a floodplain. I was designing a new house since this one has some other serious issues that would require rebuilding anyway. Thanks for the great vid and reminder to not over engineer things!

[@williamdavidson2233]

I always enjoy these videos, Grady! Thank you. Would you consider doing a series on bridges? Various Types of bridges. Alternatively another idea, how prestressed concrete beams are made.

[@ivantrapic6209]

Obligatory I live in Europe and we don't need to replace foundations because we build houses out of brick and concrete. My house has concrete foundations and I don't see how I could replace them without tearing the whole house down.

[@stormelemental13]

Brick and concrete foundations don't last forever, and you're somewhat correct, repairing masonry foundations is much more difficult and costly to repair than wooden pilings.

[@tyranneous]

@@stormelemental13 We've got a lot of Roman buildings with concrete foundations still standing. There's even more Roman foundations left from underneath buildings that are no longer there. So yep, absolutely, they don't last forever. But typically they last longer than the structures on top of them. By orders of magnitude!

[@GUIRADE95]

Back in the 80s I've use to do the excavation and grading for new big apartment buildings in Sunland CA. Most of the ground was rocks and sand. In able to dig, for example, a square of 100x 50 meters we use the flooded method. The excavation was difficult due to the big rocks, the grading was done by flooding the square hole, like a swimming pool. The Bulldozers have the water all the way up to the steel tracks. 4/7 inches. It's the only way to level a surface on a sand/rock environment. The track loaders suffer a lot of friction with the permanent contact with the rocks, sand and water. After all the work the place was flat like a nice square swimming pool. The guys with the other machines suffer a lot just to make the trenches to install the steel bars and to lay the concrete for the foundations. Fun times with the hot and humid environment to do the job.

[@ashrafulalam3662]

I really like your colourful vocabulary! It is extremely helpful for someone like me that is trying to get into engineering, so I very much appreciate your attention to the script! I could listen to you talk for hundreds of hours on the sliver of hope that one day I could be as eloquent as you. :)

[@hkboi255]

Even though I don't know anything about engineering, I love your videos! You make complicated things understandable!

[@Voltaic_Fire]

I could make a joke about piles but they're beneath me.

[@n7565j]

Here in western NC, we have mountains, red clay, and rock... Lots of rock!!! My homes built on top of a hill and the basement is in rock. (The loader that dug the basement went through 2 sets of rock teeth!!!) While our home will never "settle", every time we have a lightning strike close by the accompanying thunder shakes our home fairly violently!! Also, on the other side of our mountain is a rock quary and every time they blast it really shakes our home ;-) Great video, always enjoy learning something new!!!

[@robertpayne3041]

Great video, very informative. Here in Perth Western Australia we have mostly stable sand so the common foundation/slab used is a strip footing with a supported slab or a monolithic foundation/slab (poured in one go). Both work very well. Frost line here is about 12inches below the ground surface.

[@bmingo2828]

Living in the Midwest my whole life, I’m always surprised at how many homes outside of the Midwest don’t have basements. Yes, it’s more costly to build a basement than a crawl space, but the usable area you get is more than worth it IMO. My Aunt and Uncle (both from the Midwest) moved to California in the early 2000’s and built a house with a basement just south of San Francisco. The basement walls are 2’ thick of reinforced concrete. Many people stopped by the site as it was under construction to watch the build.

[@socialmoth4974]

Same here. I grew up in the midwest and basements are pretty ubiquitous here. Not just good due to freezing temps in the winter, but a refuge for tornadoes in the spring and summer. Although, I did rent a home without one for a period.

[@kjohn5224]

They're so prone to leaking problems though and cracks. I find them to be a pain in the ass.

[@bepowerification]

I live in a fast growing area in Poland and there were hundreds of (one family) houses built here and still are. i see new homes being built when I drive around every day.. About 0.1% of them have a basement. Its cheaper I guess. And you avoid leakage/mold problems in the future..

[@njipods]

i find it odd that American homes need so much major maintenance. over here sometimes we get subsidence if the ground moves but its pretty rare to ever do any foundation work

[@Ergzay]

Temperature and humidity variation is a lot higher in many areas of the US (also higher humidity in general). There can be up to 120 degrees (67 degrees in C scale) temperature swings from the coldest night in winter to the hottest summer day.

[@njipods]

@@Ergzay dose that make concrete not work then?

[@PracticalEngineeringChannel]

Depends where you live. America is a big place. Not everywhere has poor soils like where I am.

[@douglashowe3511]

Great video. I do calculations for soil type and loading maximums with distribution poles. A very important part of power is the pole structure and ability to withstand the forces from hurricanes to bogs. The foundation is key to success.

[@EdWilliamsPDX]

Thanks Grady. Great vid as usual. I'd be curious about geotech soil amendments and how that process works. I was tangentially involved in a commercial building project years ago where the contractors spent about 6 weeks running heavy earthmoving and compacting equipment back and forth over the site, mixing in various stuff from sand to, even, Portland cement. I get the basics of “make the ground harder“ but I'd be interested in learning how those calculations are made, materials chosen, etc

[@BaumfreundeTv]

Replacing foundations seems to be a pretty difficult endevour. Could zou make a video about this process. Maybe include the foundation replacement of your house as well as covering it on a bigger scale. How do you replace a foundation without destroying the entire building?

[@fukkitful]

I'd imagine the same as moving it. I-beams are used to support it evenly while jacking it up.

[@PLAYAWORLDRecords]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/eavbpXh4hLJ2e9k

[@tylerdavis9826]

Usually they’ll basically jack the house up, support it with beams, make the new foundation, and lower the house back down. I wouldn’t say that’s so much an engineering question, as much as a basic construction question. (Not being rude, a lot of repairs on housing are pretty basic ideas, like using jacks on your house to replace the foundation the same way you jack up your car to replace the tires, or “foundation” of the rest of your car build if you will.)

[@alexkotenko1737]

I would love to know more about ground screw foundations, how it works, caveats of how it's made, longevity, interaction with different kinds of soils etc.

[@kays0_231]

Helical piles? I work for a deep foundation company we install helical and micropiles. Helical piles are screwed into the ground. Micropiles are bars dropped into holes with cement to bond to the rock.

[@brettb.7425]

The name of your channel perfectly represents the nature of your delivery of the material to us. You teach us in a very practical way which is nice to follow and learn from. Thank you for all the great content that you upload and I hope you have a great day!

[@angelsimperfi1999]

I work building bridges and your my teacher every video you uploads your amazing. Thank you!