BUILDING CONSTRUCTION (Foundation)

BUILDING CONSTRUCTION 

(Foundation)

Building construction involves the techniques used to assemble and erect different kinds of structures or buildings.

The construction and design process is highly organized and is built on series of research establishment that study different kinds of building materials and officials who adopts and enforces different kinds of safety standards.

To construct a building or structure, several components such as foundations, roofs, walls and floors, need to be put in place.

FOUNDATION

Foundation is a structure that is used to uniformly transmit the entire building load onto a subsoil. Foundation needs to be built on a good solid ground. The load transmitted to the subsoil is done to in such a way that:

No damage is done to the settlements around 

The soil does not fail in shear 

It reduces the load intensity

It provides a level surface 

TYPES OF FOUNDATION 

Foundation can broadly be divided into two types. These are;

Shallow foundation 

Deep foundation 

Shallow foundation: These are foundations founded very close to the finished ground surface; generally where founding depth is less than a footing and less than 3m. Shallow foundations are generally not suitable in weak or highly compressible soil such as peat. 
Shallow foundation is divided into different types:

Pad foundation 

Strip foundation

Combined foundation

Raft foundation

Deep foundation: in deep foundation, building loads are usually transmitted to the earth farther down from the surface than what shallow foundations do to the earth surface layers. Deep foundation can be of the following types:

Pile foundation 

Well or caissons