Howdy,
Well, here it is my first post. My name is Keith and I’m a carpenter in Ellington CT.
I’m not sure if anyone out there is familiar with the redi footing System or not. It is a plastic base about 10″ at its base and accepts a schedule 40 pvc pipe. It has a cap again to receive the pipe and a notch to receive a 4×4 or 6×6 and voila there you have your new pier. ( of course you dig to your frost level)
I’m doing a pretty large deck 14X30 and had planned to use the system in lieu of concrete piers.
I haven’t done the $ to $ cost yet but the beauty of the system is no concrete and once inspected your on your way to framing the deck.
The building insp. gave the go ahead as the product has an engineering stamp from CT.
If your interested google redi footing and check out the site.
Any feedback appreciated.
Keith
Replies
Are you sure thiss isn't one of the forms systems for placing crete and leaving the plastic form in place?
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http://www.redifooting.com/
OK, I finally found the site, you described it right.
my concern would be that water would seep in, become trapped and freze, bursting the thing apart
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I actually have the product and they are solid plastic. Are you thinking the water table could be high after a severe rain and seep in from the bottom up or the top down?
Either way i did plan on priming and glueing the pvc to the redi footing..
This system just goes against what Ive done for years (concrete). Although I'm not too far on in my years to change my spots a bit.
I mean water freezing inside the PVC tube
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I'm gonna conduct a little experiment after the next phase of DWV goes in the project. Cap one end of a short length of SCH40 3-inch, fill 'er up with H20, and cap the other end tight, then shove the works in the freezer chest.
Report to follow.
glue the caps on or they will blow off before the sidewalls will burst on schd 40
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pretty sure it was Mike G. from RI who is an editor/regualr contributor for FH who introduced me to redi-footings. I used them under a 12x16 cabin with a 6 foot deck up in Nova Scotia. they are terrific. the cabin is on an exposed cliff subject to pretty high winds and is built into a slope. I checked it recently, now in it's third summer, and it hasn't moved an inch. everything is still dead level. each footing can support just over 10k lbs so if you are buidling a small buding on it the calculations need to be done in terms of dead, and active loads etc.. On this particualr structure I used 3 footings for the two carrying beams that ran along each 16 foot side. there were two more that supported the 6 foot deck that ran along the 12 foot side. the loads fell well under the 60k lbs the footings could hold and I used abotu the same number of footings had I used concrete.forget the concrete unless you are building a house or a barn - small sheds and decks are perfect for this product and it is cheaper adn quicker. each cap and base costs about $30 and figure about $6-12 of schedule 40 per footing down below frost. concrete where I am is about $110/yd plus delivery and a fuel charge and a whole lot more work. in fact, i just had two delivered yesterday for a small porch at my place. the logistics of them are that the caps fit very tightly onto the pipe - tight enough I don't think water can very easily seep in. they actually recommend using a soapy water solution to get them to slide on. They come with two pressure fit galvanized pins that you drill and peg both the cap and base onto the pipe so they can spin or pull off. the only difficult thing about using these footings is back filling while keeping the post where you want it and plumb. you can't fudge it around like you can with a concrete pier and post base so you need to make sure it is dead on when the backfilling is done. I recommend leaving the pipe long and cutting them all together at the end to set the level of them with a transit. also, the backfilling proces can be helped by backfilling with sand or gravel, which also helps with the water retention around the posts. I hope this helps.
I used them on a porch last year. Very handy, don't have to wait for the concrete to set up. I'd use them again.
Another thought to keep in mind. The website says they are desinged to handle a load pressure of 3821psi and a total of 10500 pounds.But that is in excess of what most soils will support so the surface are of the foot sould be applied to the bearing capacity of th esoils to ccalculate load capacity on these, not the max they can support themselves.
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It's good to know other tradesmen have used them as well. The redi footings went in today.
The holes were dug with a machine and I actually put 12" sonnet tubes in the ground for ease of inspection and backfill. I agree they were tricky to get level but we made it work.
From the time I took my first measurement for my pipe to the time the last pier was done was about 2 hours.
That's pretty good in my book. I will try and post some pictures of the project as its a pretty sweet looking deck. Portico with hidden fasteners and Trademark railings
( it's a wood polymer with a pvc coating)