Screw piles are steel pipes with steel blades, providing bearing soil capacity with intact structure, installed by manual or mechanical ways. Screw pile foundations – a modern technology of quickly installation of reliable basement on screw pipes. These details have blades that are tightly screwing into the ground, creating a secure base for a future building. The main advantage of such a basis type is the possibility not to use complex special equipment. However, you need to know rules of its pouring!
The foundation choice
How to start any building, home, cottage? Well, of course you need to start with a foundation! Reliable and sustainable basements give more durable service life. For normal conditions and soils the perfect choice in this situation is quite wide: strip foundation, columnar, block. For house construction on weak, unstable or peat soils the better option will be a screw pile basis.
This type of foundation technology is not new; it has been developed and patented for about two hundred years ago by the Irish engineer Alexander Mitchell. He invented and suggested the use of screw piles and anchors for installing beacons in estuaries and sandy shallows. Today, this technology is widely used in the field of low-rise housing and serves as a basis for all kinds of wooden frame houses. In some cases, it is also used while building block houses.
Before to start building, you should consider and decide what will be the type of your basement, in order to avoid rapid deterioration, cracks, drawdowns, or premature destruction of every house. For soft ground a screw pile basis is just the perfect choice. It is quickly and easily installed, regardless of terrain irregularities and serves for a long time – at least 100-150 years, and with special processing – even 200.
Advantages and disadvantages
Several great benefits:
- Quick installation process.
- When mounting it is not necessary to carry out excavation work and leveling your plot.
- Relatively low cost.
- High margin of details strength. They are immediately prepared to accept the load, provided by a project. You do not need to wait until a basement is settled.
Since this technology is used in construction of buildings in water, so in case of area flooding your building will not suffer.- The possibility of expanding since you can attach a new foundation to the existing one.
- The ability to carry out works at any time of the year and during all weather conditions.
- The ability to simultaneously run utilities.
- Quick and easy repair.
- Details are not afraid of cold, they are resistant to seismic events, do not require special waterproofing or violate the integrity of surrounding ground, which is particularly relevant in the context of weak soils.
- Each pile can withstand a load weighing several tons.
However, this foundation type has its drawbacks: while installing you need to contact professionals, because the stony terrain can damage main details and as a result they may get corrosion. With unscrupulous mounting you can accidentally deviate from the building design increasing or decreasing the basement size.
The mounting procedure
The installation process is simple and clear, in most cases you can cope with it alone:
- Determine the house location on a plot;
- Mount a corner (base) screw pile;
- According to your layout, set the rest of details;
- Perform the pile trimming by level;
- Mount a headroom on details top;
- Make the foundation tying with channel bar or beam.
When installing your basement necessarily ensure that piles are occupied strictly vertical position, checking it with a building level. When constructing a screw pile basis in the city you need to request communications card, which may take place under your plot, or check the estimated area with the help of a cable detection instrument. Outside the city, such precautions are generally unnecessary.
Comfort around
Screw pile foundations are great, because they might be used in almost any conditions without destroying the natural terrain. You can build very carefully a house on the forest glade without damaging trees, or, for example, a cottage on a hillside. As well as a pier for boat or fishing at your favorite backwater will not affect the natural landscape or harm the natural environment. And if you are not lucky with marshy areas, and then there are simply no other options!
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