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I see houses and barndominiums on YT with a continuous slab that extends from living space out to porch and garage space.
Obviously I'm not a concrete expert here, but it seems to me that a better option would be to have separate slabs for each due to the weather and temperature differences between the spaces.
Also, I would think that cracks can travel across spaces.
Am I over thinking this and this is not a concern?
Ray
Ray
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(08-15-2021, 07:54 AM)DogwoodTales Wrote: I see houses and barndominiums on YT with a continuous slab that extends from living space out to porch and garage space.
Obviously I'm not a concrete expert here, but it seems to me that a better option would be to have separate slabs for each due to the weather and temperature differences between the spaces.
Also, I would think that cracks can travel across spaces.
Am I over thinking this and this is not a concern?
Ray
Continuous slabs are for warmer climates. They are usually post tensioned with cables. There is usually no separated foundations.
Isolated slabs are needed in the cold. These usually have a frost foundation around them.
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Everything I've seen, even in warm climates, has a separate slab for the garage/carport and any patios.
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(08-15-2021, 06:05 PM)Mr_Mike Wrote: Everything I've seen, even in warm climates, has a separate slab for the garage/carport and any patios.
It's that way around here. In Sacramento a redwood cracked the driveway and buckled the garage slab.
I replaced them as separate units with a gap between as that's how they were
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08-16-2021, 03:43 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-16-2021, 03:44 AM by CStan.)
You just haven't lived until you've had to had the slab jack-hammered up inside and in the middle of your house to fix a plumbing problem.
If you buy or build a house on a slab foundation, make darn sure the design puts the bathrooms and kitchen on the perimeter of the slab. And them sometimes that's not enough.
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08-16-2021, 11:17 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-16-2021, 11:27 AM by msweig.)
My house (in Houston) is one slab with the tensioned cables. But it is also one of those zero lot line type, and three stories, so there are two stories over the garage.
The porch is separate, but that might simply be that the builder wanted to give people options on how big of a porch to have in the "yard" (which is basically large enough to hold a grill or two).
If there is anything that is annoying with my slab it is the fact that the garage is sunken slightly compared to the rest of the house. I totally understand why that is done, but I would have preferred if it was like that at the back wall/door, not a foot or two from the back wall. This basically creates a step along the width of my garage, which is annoying for putting things in the garage along the back wall. I ended up needing to build a ramp for my bandsaw so I could get it off of a storage space on the raised portion.
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As far as I could tell, the house/porch front and rear/attached garage were all one pour on the place in TEXAS. If they were separate, they did a really god job hiding it.
Slab for the garage I had built here is monolithic... no separate frost footings. I believe the garage guy said mine was one of the first like that approved in Nebraska City, and they'd been doing them that way for quite some time elsewhere.
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(08-16-2021, 05:48 PM)KC Wrote: As far as I could tell, the house/porch front and rear/attached garage were all one pour on the place in TEXAS. If they were separate, they did a really god job hiding it.
Slab for the garage I had built here is monolithic... no separate frost footings. I believe the garage guy said mine was one of the first like that approved in Nebraska City, and they'd been doing them that way for quite some time elsewhere.
In northern climates most areas allow detached garages to not have a frost footing. They usually have a thickened edge slab. Expect the garage to move if the soils are bad.
You can have a monolithic slab in cold climates if you install rigid insulation around the perimeter under the soil for many feet outside the perimeter. This is called a 'frost protected shallow slab'. The idea is the insulation keeps the ground below the slab thawed and stable.
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Thanks for the replies.
Yeah, I'm already thinking that if I build a house with a slab that all of the rooms with plumbing will be on outside walls and, if possible, only on one side of the house. Of course only drains will be under the slab.
Come to think of it I think almost all of the slabs I saw were in Texas with one or two somewhere northern. Seems like the temperature extremes of Texas between A/C on the interior to 100+ in the sun on the porch would be an issue, but like I said I'm not an expert on this subject.
Ray
