Anyone know about Wood Foundations?

barbee6043 said
the so called pole building here is the norm for barns/garages. treated 4 x 4 or 5 x 5 's. the poles are set upright in the ground, those are your "foundation".

my home is of that construction. I describe it as "rustic"!!! no problem with insurance, I have to pick my ins. co. as far as wood hear is concerned tought.

if I sell, NOT eligible for trick govn't FHA financing, as it is not considered " conventional" construction. I would have to find a buyer that actually has some $$. or finance it. Ha

This is essentially the same, except that you don't know the true bearing capacity of your poles since they weren't driven. Perfectly acceptable for a utility structure without much forethought, but for a home, someone should have evaluated the bearing capacity of the soil under each of the poles to ensure there won't be differential settling in the future. I built a building where all but one corner of the planned structure bore on solid subsurface conditions. We had to drive piles down below the "soft" subsoil in that corner and beef up the footing to span it back to the solid soil. The only way to know this in advance is to do a boring analysis at each of the corners in advance (and midway on long sides if the structure will be a long one).

What I recommend for pole barn excavations in softer soil is to dig the hole wide at the bottom and place concrete in it up to a foot thick, letting it cure for a few days, before placing the poles in the holes. The wider concrete foot spreads the point load onto a larger area, which decreases the potential for settling problems.

Coating the underground portion of the pole with an asphaltic product is good too.

Full encasement of the underground portion in concrete is overkill, unless you need the structure to resist some wind loading that it wouldn't otherwise get from diagonal bracing of adjacent wall corners. Such as in the case of a free standing straight wall (I don't know what use anyone would have for this though).

These are just some general thoughts. Each structure's design should be evaluated by either a professional or an experienced builder.