Selecting the Foundation

Originally published September 1966.

R.F. Legget and C.B. Crawford

1. calculating the loads that must be transferred from the structure to the strata supporting
it;
2. determining the exact character of subsurface conditions, including groundwater
conditions, to a depth of at least twice the width of the structure; and
3. designing a foundation structure that will safely transfer the loads from the structure to
the foundation beds that have been found at the site.

The very small buildings excluded from this general statement may be taken to be one and
two-storey residences and equivalent structures, the loads from which are so small in relation
to the size of the area they cover that empirical methods of foundation design will usually,
though not always, suffice. This Digest will present an outline of the way in which the type of
foundation structure best suited to a particular site can be selected.

There is a wide choice of types of foundation structure. If the loads from building columns
can be transmitted directly to the ground beneath, the column base can be enlarged in some
suitable way - by a concrete slab, a concrete-encased grillage of steel beams or even heavy
timbers. The result is a spread footing. If it is necessary to have many spread footings beneath
a structure, it may be economical to join all of them together into one large concrete slab on
which the columns bear. This is then a raft foundation (or continuous footing) . The name is a
good one, since it implies that the structure is "floating" on the ground beneath. The actual
principle, of flotation is sometimes used when the foundation structure is located well below
the ground surface. The whole basement of a building then acts as a box foundation or, if
specially designed, as will be explained below, a floating foundation.

The types so far described are all used very close to, or at the surface of, the ground. If the
building loads have to be transferred to strata well below the surface, it must be done through
sub-surface columns. If these consist of cylindrical holes filled with concrete, they will be
called caissons, which are generally used for very heavy loads. More usually the columns can
be more slender units and may be driven into the ground or formed of concrete in smaller
diameter holes that are specially formed. These are piles and may be of concrete, steel or
wood.

Whatever type of foundation structure is used, its object is to transfer the load from the
building to the ground safely. The bearing capacity of the soil or rock clearly must not be
exceeded. Very few cases are on record where this has happened and an actual failure has
taken place, the tilting of the Transcona Elevator near Winnipeg being one of the few major
examples and one that is world famous. Much more frequent is the development of excessive
settlement when the full load is applied. With modern soil mechanics techniques and adequate
subsurface investigation, there is today no reason why building settlements cannot be

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predicted with accuracy and the foundation design so proportioned that the inevitable
settlement will be within allowable limits.

Such design is the work of an expert in foundations. Every designer, however, whether
architect or engineer, must have a broad appreciation of the principles of foundation design so
that he may select, from the various types available, that best suited to his structure. The
design of foundations is not something that, as one designer was heard to say, "can be left to
the piling company." The following notes suggest the main determinants that govern the
solution of the type of foundation to be used.

Variations in Site Conditions

Subsurface conditions at any building site can be grouped into three main types:

1. solid rock - may exist either at ground surface or so close to it that buildings may be
founded directly upon it;
2. bedrock - may exist beneath the surface but at such a depth that building loads may, if
necessary, be transferred indirectly to it; and
3. bedrock - may be so far beneath the ground surface that it is neither practicable nor
economical to transfer building loads to it, the loads having to be carried by the
superincumbent soil.

The direct influence of local geology upon the conditions that may be expected in any locality
will be obvious. There are few major examples of the first condition met with in normal
Canadian building practice, although many of the major buildings in the city of New York are
founded directly upon the Manhattan schist that constitutes so much of Manhattan Island. In
many Canadian cities, such as Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver, there are some
locations where rock is close enough to the surface to be used directly as the foundation bed,
but only in some northern locations is this condition a general determinant of foundation
design. The second condition is very widely experienced. in Canadian cities, Winnipeg being
a typical example, and many of its buildings are supported on caissons and piles that transmit
the building loads to the underlying bedrock. The third condition - bedrock so deep below the
surface that it cannot be used as a bearing medium - is also encountered in Canada, notably in
prairie cities such as Saskatoon.

This variety of subsurface conditions is, in itself, an indication of the varied geology to be
found in Canada. The fact that almost all of its surface has been glaciated is of unusual
significance, since the form of the underlying bedrock may bear no resemblance to the
contours of the ground surface above. Canada may not yet, like Oslo in Norway, have such a
remarkable example as one in that city where one corner of a building, now famous, rests
directly upon solid rock-while the opposite corner is supported by steel piles that go down
over 160 feet to bear on the same rock surface. There are, however, in many Canadian cities,
buildings that have had to be founded on quite uneven rock, the Besserer Street Postal
Building in Ottawa being a particularly good example. Even with bedrock close to the surface
at one corner of a building site, therefore, no assumptions can be made that this condition will
persist over the site. Test borings must be put down at intervals such that there can be no
doubt as to where rock will be found when excavation commences. The Building Physics part
of the Division's own building in Ottawa was originally planned as an extension of the main
Building Centre. Test borings showed, however, that in a distance of 75 feet from the rear
corner of the existing building, the level of the bedrock dropped over 90 feet. The extension

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was therefore built as a separate unit at a location where bedrock could readily be used. The
fact that such great variations in rock level can be encountered must always be kept in mind in
all Canadian building foundation design work.

Buildings Founded Directly in Rock

When bedrock is conveniently and economically available at a depth that can be used as direct
bearing for the building to be erected, foundation design is greatly simplified. The solidity and
continuity of the rock must naturally be thoroughly tested by diamond drilling over the whole
site, especially with sedimentary rocks in which seams may be encountered. Only if very
heavy concentrated loads have to be transmitted to the rock will loading, or strength tests be
necessary, as a general rule; but groundwater conditions will be of special importance, not
only in connection with construction operations but also in relation to the design of the
permanent drainage arrangements.

Buildings Founded Indirectly on Rock

It is impossible to specify the limiting depth to which building loads can be economically
transferred to bedrock well below ground surface, since subsurface conditions as well as the
size of the building and the nature of its loads will all be determinants. It is believed that the
foundations for the Cleveland Union Terminal Tower in Cleveland, Ohio, still constitute the
record for depth, caissons transferring the Tower loads to bedrock at a depth of 250 feet. At
least one Canadian bridge is founded on piles that go somewhat beyond this depth, but these
are extremes. With the advance of modern Soil Mechanics studies, solutions can now usually
be found for problems of building foundation design where bedrock is very deep that do not
necessitate such unusually long supporting columns. For whether piles or caissons are used,
their function is to act as columns in transferring the loads from the foundation of the building
to the bedrock beneath.

Piles used in this way are, therefore, end-bearing piles as distinct from friction piles, to be
mentioned in the next section. As columns supported by the surrounding soil, they are subject
to compressive stress. Wood, steel, or concrete piles can be used. The loads involved with
modern buildings usually dictate the use of steel or concrete but many older buildings are still
supported by timber piles. If any changes in the level of groundwater occur in the vicinity of
such buildings, rotting of the wood may result and cause trouble. Settlement of the Boston
Public Library was found to be due to this cause. Steel piles are easy to handle and to chive;
their use will be dictated by economic factors if ground conditions are suitable and if it is
known that no adverse groundwater conditions are present that might cause deterioration of
the exposed steel. Concrete piles may be pre-cast or cast-in-place, the former requiring
accurate knowledge of depths if curing is to be avoided; the latter requiring that ground
conditions be quite suitable for their use even if they are of the type utilizing a steel shell that
is driven first and then filled with concrete.

If unusually heavy and concentrated loads have to be transferred from building, to rock, then
the maximum practicable size of pile may not be adequate and larger columns in the form of
caissons must be used. Correspondingly, if preliminary investigations have indicated the
presence of boulders or any other condition that will make pile driving difficult or impossible,
caissons must be considered unless an altogether different type of foundation design is
possible. Ingenious machines are now available for excavating the circular holes for caissons.
With good soil conditions and lined holes, the shafts can be inspected down to bedrock before

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Concrete is placed in position. The well known "Chicago well" is a widely used type of
foundation caisson, many thousands having been used to carry building loads through the blue
clay upon which Chicago is founded. Belling out the bottom of the caisson to obtain extra
bearing area on bedrock is common practice if soil conditions are suitable.

It will be evident that for all these methods most accurate knowledge of subsurface conditions
- and especially of bedrock levels - is essential. With such information, it is possible to
estimate costs accurately, so that they can then be compared with the cost of the alternatives
now available for founding structures directly upon soil.

Buildings Founded on Soil

Soils are solid materials not dissimilar to rock except that, they are not so strong and may
consist, as does sand, of small fragments of rock that have to be confined if they are to carry
load. A stiff clay can be almost identical with a soft shale - to such an extent that one cannot
draw a hard-and-fast dividing line between what is rock and what is soil. Accordingly, soils
will be susceptible to stress and strain in exactly the same way as rock or any other solid
material. It is, therefore, possible to calculate in advance the stress from superimposed
building loads that will be in any soil. If the strength characteristics of the soil are known, it is
also possible to calculate in advance of construction how the soil will behave when the loads
are applied. The strength characteristics of soils can be determined by laboratory tests carried
out on carefully obtained samples. These must be in a condition as close as possible to that of
the soil in place. Since most soils contain water, this means that most soil samples must be
very carefully protected as soon as they are taken from the ground, usually by the waxing of
the containers, so that the water content or the samples when tested will be the same as that of
the soil in the ground.

These procedures and associated theoretical considerations of soil action constitute the
modern science of Soil Mechanics. The proper application of the results of such scientific
studies now enables the foundation engineer to design a foundation for any given combination
of loads on even the most unpromising soil, as also upon soils that have not caused problems
when utilized in more pragmatic ways. If, for example, loads are relatively light and the
bearing strata of soil are correspondingly strong, with no weak buried strata that might cause
settlement at the surface when loaded, then spread footings or the common type of foundation
raft of reinforced concrete may prove to be practicable foundation designs.

If there is a stratum of strong soil at some appreciable distance below the surface, as revealed
by soil sampling and testing, then the use of piles may again be suitable and economical for
transferring the loads from the structure to the good bearing material. Such piles may gain a
part of their bearing capacity from the friction developed between their exposed sides and the
soil with which they are in contact in penetrating the soils that overlie the strong bearing
material. Alternatively, soil studies may show that merely by driving piles into the upper
layers of soil, without any firm bearing stratum for the points of the piles, enough resistance
can be mobilized from the "skin friction" (as it is called) between the sides of the piles and the
surrounding soil to provide the necessary support for the calculated building loads. It is usual
to conduct loading tests on one or more full-scale driven piles to check on such calculations.
Standards methods for such loading tests are available, and means for transforming the results
of a single pile test into a reasonable estimate of the bearing capacity of a complete pile
group.

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Before any decision can be made as to the use of piles however, the most accurate subsurface
information for the whole building site must be available. Not only must the presence of
boulders be checked for, but also the possible existence of weak buried strata. This is
particularly important if uncased cast-in-place concrete piles are to be used. These are
versatile units and are quite widely used when piles have been called for, but their success
depends upon the adequacy of the soils through which they are driven. Subsurface
information is also necessary in order to enable alternative foundation types to be
investigated.

Some types of clay soils, although they have good strength properties, are so constituted that
when loaded they will easily compress as water is "squeezed out" of them. This feature will
cause undue settlement of any structure founded upon them. If, however, the water is
squeezed out of such clay over the whole site in advance of building, the clay will provide
quite adequate bearing capacity with no detrimental settlement of the structure. This can be
achieved by preloading the whole site with a load that can readily be removed when erection
of the building is to proceed - a heavy material such as sand may be handled easily.
Preloading has now been quite successfully applied to a wide variety of building sites. The
economics of the method naturally limit its application to rather special cases, but it is
probable that its use will increase appreciably.

A far older method, but one now coming into prominence, is readily described as the use of a
floating foundation. The word "floating" is used in its literal sense. When a body floats in
water, it displaces a volume of water the weight of which is equal to the weight of the floating
body. In just the same way a building can be floated on soil, the weight of the building and its
loads being equal to the weight of the "displaced" soil, i.e., the soil that must be excavated to
provide for the foundation structure of the building.

Before any soil has been removed, the stress at the level of the bottom of the necessary
foundation (due to the weight of the soil that is to be removed) can readily be seen to be
exactly the same as the stress that will be present when the building and its loads have been
substituted for the excavated soil. Theoretically, no further settlement of the underlying soil
will take place. Construction requirements may modify this desirable state slightly, but the
basic idea is sound. It has already been applied to many large buildings.

It is not a new idea. The great Sir John Rennie quite clearly used it for the design of a
warehouse in the West Indian Docks of London, England, in the early nineteenth century.
Like many other ideas of those inspired early pioneer engineers, floating foundations had to
wait until the twentieth century was well on its way before they were recognized again as one
of the soundest of all types of foundation design when anything other than direct bearing on
soil strata at or near the surface of the ground must be used. The Post Office Building in
Albany, New York, was one of the pioneer North American buildings to be so founded. There
are now some Canadian buildings floating on the soil beneath them, notably a fine multi-
storey building in Ottawa founded on Leda clay. It seems certain, with steady advance in the
art of foundation engineering, and especially since Canada has so many locations where the
soils are actually weakened by the operation of pile driving, that floating foundations will be
used to an increasing degree in this country when the combination of soil conditions and
building loads warrants this type of design.

Expert engineering assistance is naturally necessary for the design of all major building
foundations as it is also for the conduct of all preliminary subsurface investigations. At the

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same time, building designers, architects and engineers should have a broad appreciation of
the main types of foundation structure that can be used, and of the correlation of such designs
with with the over-all pattern of local sub-surface conditions. A finished foundation design
should be an integral part of the design of all buildings; it is not something that can, or should,
be left to be worked out after construction has started.

Foundations for Small Buildings

The foundations for small buildings were excluded from the preceding discussion because
they are rarely "designed" in the engineering sense, usually being based on common local
practice. Simple calculations will show that the loads to be carried by the foundation bed
beneath a single-family dwelling, for example, are small indeed. Factors other than loads and
consequent bearing stresses accordingly influence such foundations. Amongst the most
important of these, especially in some parts of western Canada, is the existence at ground
surface of clay soils having well developed properties of swelling and shrinking with changes
in water content. In such areas special measures are called for to avoid serious troubles with
movements of the superstructure. More attention is now being given, therefore, to the
foundations of smaller buildings. Long accepted practices, such as the inevitability of house
basements, are being questioned. A future Digest will be devoted to this subject, with special
reference to the potential for economy in building provided by the use of concrete slabs-on-
ground for house foundations.