I am building an addition onto my house and have to pour concrete footings (11 of them) under the cantelevered side of my house provide support for new second level. The footings have to be 12″ thick and the bottoms have to be 30″ below grade. The problem I run into is that I live on an island, right next to the bay, and the water level is about four inches below grade. I dug my first footing hole yesterday and came home today to find it filled with water and collapsed (it filled in over the form I put in the bottom). Any suggestions on how I can keep these holes dry enough to get through my inspections? The inspectors only work Tues and Thurs from 1 PM until 4PM (what a life!) so the holes will have to be open and dry for a while.
As always…your suggestions and input are greatly appreciated.
Brian….Bayview Renovation
Replies
I think you may need an engineer to spec some concrete that you can pour into the footing and displace the water. I know a transmission guy who did this when he added a bay to his shop. Or get a few good pumps.
Have a good day
Cliffy
I'm sure you don't want to buy eleven pumps, and assume that the local inspector might not want to let you just take photographs of each one to do them one at a time.
If you really have to do it this way, you should look for the plastic bigfoot footing/pier forms, and see if you can get them OKed prior to purchase.
But I'm thinking that you would be better served to have a backhoe or excavator ( how small is this island anyway?) dig a single trench, large/wide enough to avoid the pitfalls ( no pun intended) of bank cave-ins, and form/pour a single continuous footing to place your piers on
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