Few notes: Not all clay is expansive!! It's dependant on the type of mineral that makes the clay such as illite, killite, montmorillonite, etc. Search local geographic reports or geotechnical reports on the clay in your area. Moreover, the play doh move is considered a plasticity test, where you want to be able to roll a soil to approx. 1/8" thick, but this is dependent on the moisture and indicates the point at which a soil behaves plastically. To actually determine the amount of clay in a soil you'd want to carry out a hydrometer test which will determine the % of clay on the samples. If you have expansive soils in your area, manage moisture; trees near your house can also affect the foundations. For foundations, essentially more reinforcing is required for structural elements and in some cases pile foundations maybe a more practical option than footings. There are soils expansive tests to determine the amount of pressure the soil may exert on a surface. For slabs on grade, or grade beams typically you may add a 4" thick piece of styrofoam such that the styrofoam displaces rather than the concrete.
Matt I'm surprised you dont have your own tv show yet! Seriously, you are an outstanding presenter, highly knowledgeable, with top notch advice. All the best. -Cheers
Modern day youtube stars can make more than an hgtv host. There is the added advantage that you make that in perpetuity with very few middle men to pay (other than google for the ad margin).
Matt Risinger says” MOM!!! You promised you wouldn’t do this again!!! I mean, thanks, totally random RUclips watcher that I don’t know, and who is definitely my mom!”
For most YT is a better goal than TV, with its many restrictions on content and so forth. He's doing great financially already and it will only continue to build.
Engineer was not involved in 90% of homes in Houston homes. Cookie cutter homes, streamlined inspections, homie/favor/fast building contracts. This results in homes in constant state of repair
Matt, we're plagued by the same soils here in Jackson, Mississippi. I'm a home builder/licensed home inspector. I've measured dozens of homes here, some 9 inches out of level. It's important to know what's under your foundation. I too recommend soil tests and GEO engineer reports.
Looking forward to future videos on this subject matter. Living in Mississippi, we too have a high clay content in our soil. Thanks again for another great video.
In Russia, it is the most common loam soil. The easiest is the foundation of reinforced concrete pillars below the freezing depth. If the groundwater is close, it is necessary to drill below. A more expensive and the most common variant in Russia is a concrete ribbon below the freezing depth. Sorry for English, Google translator.
+Антон Петухов Thanks for commenting! It sounds like Russian soil is very similar to the Northern United States. I built homes for many years outside of Washington DC and we had loam soil too. Best, Matt
Антон Петухов i want to cut 2 3x3 hole in the concrete , Dig 8ft down. I think i should cut hole floor out so cocrete pillars will then be wried into the floor Re pour floor filling the pillars
Thank you. Your videos are a great service to all architects, contractors, and the high performance home building industry in particular. I know several team members on the certifications team at Earth Advantage watch your videos.
Hi Josh, when i wanted to build my house in pure clay soil, a friend told me to do on concrete slab but thicker etc..but i thought no matter how thick the concrete slab the troubles would be there eventually, so i decided to build elevated and all metal house. Gosh, so glad i did.....again the builder wanted to do the interior walls with gyprock and i totally refused, the movement my pure clay soil has would have cracked the gyprock in no time....don't they build elevated houses down your area? would avoid many troubles. Cheers
I see, i believe in observing and asking, why did they (olden days) build in piers? in my case (pure clay soil) the answer was obvious, certainly you can do lot of things to avoid damp etc..on concrete slab, in our case would have been pushing it....cheers
@@ccsworldaustralia4332 Because back in the "good old days" they made things to last. Now, it's easier & cheaper to skip certain steps. And future owners pay the price.
I have a ton of clay and opted for steel pier and beam with deep piers and beams/columns welded down to embeds. Doors opening and closing fine and no drywall cracks yet, hopefully my luck holds up.
I just want to do a small pole frame lean to on my place for animals. Our clay is largely glacial lake left overs from when the lower Puget sound/Chehailis river was a melt water channel surrounded by lakes, and the tip of a giant Puget lobe ice sheet to the north. This clay we have is soft and squishy/stickey durring the wet winter months, and hard as a rock durring the summer...
The well drained sand will provide a conduit for water to enter the foundation area and saturate the clay. This should only be used if you can daylight the sand to drain off the property
Matt, what's the link to the sequel for this one on expansive clay soil? I looked at your posted videos, but you have so many, all of which are worth watching. : D
I love it great movie and I do construction work in the dirt digging with backhoes when I took me a lot of years to learn all thatabout to Clay dirt expanding when it's wet I want it dries it shrinks and cracksare used to see you in the summer time I would dig down and the clay ground was wet and sloppy and muddy thus was in like a hundred 112 degree weather conditions
He is prepping you for his complicated $100,000 foundation sale idea but GRAVEL TRENCH can do the job fine if your house isn't multiple stories tall I have been told. 3/4 inch Gravel is amazing foundation in clay soil. I'm told.
For those who couldn't tell, the TIP was: get a Geotechnical engineer involved before completing the build plan. Not a useful tip for many, but a tip none the less
+Matt, I live in Ohio, and our county is famous for having a lot of clay. However, I've never heard of homes hear having any kind of special foundation. The only topic seems to be whether the basement walls should be poured our block. Poured walls seem to be the default, and it is usually stated as being due to the clay. Is it perhaps because some types of clay or less expansive?
for sticky clay soil, down to 8' ( dug trenchs to find that out ) at what level would you recomend ( I will get it engineered by a professional ) could rock be put down? In other words, how deep into the clay?
Please help, Matt. I'm in the process of building a house after watching a lot of your videos and many others. I ran into the worst soil condition, soft clay. To make matters worst, I dug a trench around the house, and groundwater started to fill up the trench. Now I have an active pond. With that, I have no choice but to wait until everything dries out. What can I do besides waiting until everything dries?
Matt, I live in South Africa on a farm. We have black clay for at least 9 meter s(about 20 feet) deep before the next layer of soil. The top's clay content is about 35%. How the devil do you build on it?
Bring in an admixture like lime, disc it in the soil, recompact it, check with geotech engineer and build your building to where water does not enter at your foundation level. French drains and waterproofing will help.
+59seank Depends, but in our area yes. We typically have clay layers that run very deep so we need concrete piers that tunnel down to rock layers below.
Who else keeps misreading expansive as expensive? I guess the lesson in this video is this: expansive is just expensive spelled with an A instead of an I if you do not build your foundation right.
Hi Matt, I am Creating a Concrete Pool Slab .. How would you recommend preparing an areas for a a 16x16 pool pad poured on clay and water flowing around 1side and two corners of the slab. Would you use a deep footer around all sides of the slab or can you get a way with partial footers as its a small slab.
Nice, quick video, Matt. Thanks! On average, how much does it cost for the survey and engineering report? We have property in Carmine, TX. Six miles north of Round Top. Thanks!
The title was misleading click bait to get you to watch other videos with the answer. If it weren't, you would have called it, "Building: How to recognize clay soils and why knowing is important"
any common peasant that has dug a few holes knows clay from sand from topsoil.,., but how do you build a solid concrete bunker with a crawl space where if you take one shovel of dirt out of a 12% grade it will start running water.,?.?.,., and f a slab house., they are nothing but problems.,., ';'
The Plasticity index isn't a clue on how much it's going to move. It's the portion at which the clay is going to act plastic in nature or like play doh as you call it
Would love a video on how to build a basement in a clay rich yard. E.g. multilayer drains, gravel barrier, fabric protection and soil compaction.
Few notes: Not all clay is expansive!! It's dependant on the type of mineral that makes the clay such as illite, killite, montmorillonite, etc. Search local geographic reports or geotechnical reports on the clay in your area. Moreover, the play doh move is considered a plasticity test, where you want to be able to roll a soil to approx. 1/8" thick, but this is dependent on the moisture and indicates the point at which a soil behaves plastically. To actually determine the amount of clay in a soil you'd want to carry out a hydrometer test which will determine the % of clay on the samples.
If you have expansive soils in your area, manage moisture; trees near your house can also affect the foundations. For foundations, essentially more reinforcing is required for structural elements and in some cases pile foundations maybe a more practical option than footings. There are soils expansive tests to determine the amount of pressure the soil may exert on a surface. For slabs on grade, or grade beams typically you may add a 4" thick piece of styrofoam such that the styrofoam displaces rather than the concrete.
Fear Sells EVERYTHING including super cool foundations like his.
I like that styrofoam idea.
So, what did we accomplish with this 3:26 video? How to roll clay in your hands and make a snake?
So where is the next video? It’s been 7 years ago
How to find it
Matt I'm surprised you dont have your own tv show yet! Seriously, you are an outstanding presenter, highly knowledgeable, with top notch advice. All the best. -Cheers
Modern day youtube stars can make more than an hgtv host. There is the added advantage that you make that in perpetuity with very few middle men to pay (other than google for the ad margin).
Matt Risinger says” MOM!!! You promised you wouldn’t do this again!!!
I mean, thanks, totally random RUclips watcher that I don’t know, and who is definitely my mom!”
For most YT is a better goal than TV, with its many restrictions on content and so forth. He's doing great financially already and it will only continue to build.
lol 1m subs on youtube. i would take that over being on HGTV any day. he's his own boss on youtube.
Engineer was not involved in 90% of homes in Houston homes. Cookie cutter homes, streamlined inspections, homie/favor/fast building contracts.
This results in homes in constant state of repair
Matt, we're plagued by the same soils here in Jackson, Mississippi. I'm a home builder/licensed home inspector. I've measured dozens of homes here, some 9 inches out of level. It's important to know what's under your foundation. I too recommend soil tests and GEO engineer reports.
+Gary Smith Yes agreed. This is only meant as a quick test, not a replacement for a GeoTech engineer and a boring test. Thanks for commenting. Matt
Wow!
That’s why they’ve come out with the new tella firma foundations in Texas. Or you can excavate it out & bring clean fill dirt
Looking forward to future videos on this subject matter. Living in Mississippi, we too have a high clay content in our soil. Thanks again for another great video.
This is what I'd use: ruclips.net/video/_M0OgL6BKIo/видео.html
In Russia, it is the most common loam soil. The easiest is the foundation of reinforced concrete pillars below the freezing depth. If the groundwater is close, it is necessary to drill below. A more expensive and the most common variant in Russia is a concrete ribbon below the freezing depth. Sorry for English, Google translator.
+Антон Петухов Thanks for commenting! It sounds like Russian soil is very similar to the Northern United States. I built homes for many years outside of Washington DC and we had loam soil too. Best, Matt
Антон Петухов our home is now showwing sign of crowning in most floor under the carpet
Антон Петухов i want to cut 2 3x3 hole in the concrete , Dig 8ft down.
I think i should cut hole floor out so cocrete pillars will then be wried into the floor Re pour floor filling the pillars
Thank you. Your videos are a great service to all architects, contractors, and the high performance home building industry in particular. I know several team members on the certifications team at Earth Advantage watch your videos.
Clay soil here. It's rare to find a home that hasn't had foundation repair here. DFW, TX.
Hi Josh, when i wanted to build my house in pure clay soil, a friend told me to do on concrete slab but thicker etc..but i thought no matter how thick the concrete slab the troubles would be there eventually, so i decided to build elevated and all metal house. Gosh, so glad i did.....again the builder wanted to do the interior walls with gyprock and i totally refused, the movement my pure clay soil has would have cracked the gyprock in no time....don't they build elevated houses down your area? would avoid many troubles. Cheers
CC's World AUSTRALIA most new houses are on slabs here. You'll have pier and beam but it's normally on older homes.
I see, i believe in observing and asking, why did they (olden days) build in piers? in my case (pure clay soil) the answer was obvious, certainly you can do lot of things to avoid damp etc..on concrete slab, in our case would have been pushing it....cheers
@@ccsworldaustralia4332 Because back in the "good old days" they made things to last. Now, it's easier & cheaper to skip certain steps. And future owners pay the price.
liked how you broke up problem---solution to keep videos brief. great job matt
+Joe Large Thanks JOE! Video coming soon of the foundation on this lot too!
Important Note. NOT ALL CLAYS ARE EXPANSIVE. But - yes in texas, the clays are expansive.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH I CAM"T WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT EPISODE COMES OUT!
This is a really helpful video. Seeing the clay like that makes sense versus the black soil that breaks apart.
Bits dropping off left right and centre
"You can see it's holding together really well"
Sausage breaks in half
🌚
I have a ton of clay and opted for steel pier and beam with deep piers and beams/columns welded down to embeds. Doors opening and closing fine and no drywall cracks yet, hopefully my luck holds up.
I can't wait to see the next videos on this.
+Matt Risinger
How is your next video called? I can't find it in the list of all your videos! (Didn't find a video with "clay" in the title!)
ruclips.net/video/_M0OgL6BKIo/видео.html
I just want to do a small pole frame lean to on my place for animals. Our clay is largely glacial lake left overs from when the lower Puget sound/Chehailis river was a melt water channel surrounded by lakes, and the tip of a giant Puget lobe ice sheet to the north. This clay we have is soft and squishy/stickey durring the wet winter months, and hard as a rock durring the summer...
Zero building tips. Zero.
I'd recommend backfilling foundations with a well draining sand compacted. Don't backfill with clay
The well drained sand will provide a conduit for water to enter the foundation area and saturate the clay. This should only be used if you can daylight the sand to drain off the property
@@zb7874 tell that to all the architects and engineers who spec this. Compaction is key
Put it in a kiln to make a ceramic cover then bury the tiles at an angle away from the foundation
Matt, what's the link to the sequel for this one on expansive clay soil? I looked at your posted videos, but you have so many, all of which are worth watching. : D
Same here! Did you find it?
ruclips.net/video/oaktDas3dHg/видео.html
Alright, thank you!
I love it great movie and I do construction work in the dirt digging with backhoes when I took me a lot of years to learn all thatabout to Clay dirt expanding when it's wet I want it dries it shrinks and cracksare used to see you in the summer time I would dig down and the clay ground was wet and sloppy and muddy thus was in like a hundred 112 degree weather conditions
Ok you showed how to know if it’s clay. But never showed tips about actually building on clay soil..
Clickbait.
I kept looking for the "Pro Tip" but came up empty.
He is prepping you for his complicated $100,000 foundation sale idea but GRAVEL TRENCH can do the job fine if your house isn't multiple stories tall I have been told. 3/4 inch Gravel is amazing foundation in clay soil. I'm told.
@@SuperTigerTV That makes sense to me!!!
Here is an actual tip: Demand a Wafflemat foundation. The best answer to expansive soils by far. And its less expensive because it uses less concrete.
Yep...might as well have been watching an infomercial for an injury attorney on my local cable network.
"Taco'd" pro-terms! Love it
For those who couldn't tell, the TIP was: get a Geotechnical engineer involved before completing the build plan.
Not a useful tip for many, but a tip none the less
My front entryway taco'd! I have silty clay loam soil.
If the clay is only 30 inches deep, could it be removed and tge have foundation start under the clay level?
Absolutely!!!
What kind of foundation recomended for this soil.!!!
+Matt, I live in Ohio, and our county is famous for having a lot of clay. However, I've never heard of homes hear having any kind of special foundation. The only topic seems to be whether the basement walls should be poured our block. Poured walls seem to be the default, and it is usually stated as being due to the clay. Is it perhaps because some types of clay or less expansive?
Exactly! There are various types of clay. So naturally there are various types of solutions.
for sticky clay soil, down to 8' ( dug trenchs to find that out ) at what level would you recomend ( I will get it engineered by a professional ) could rock be put down? In other words, how deep into the clay?
Thanks
The pro tip is hiring a pro? We are asking and looking at the title for what we can do.
Please help, Matt. I'm in the process of building a house after watching a lot of your videos and many others. I ran into the worst soil condition, soft clay. To make matters worst, I dug a trench around the house, and groundwater started to fill up the trench. Now I have an active pond. With that, I have no choice but to wait until everything dries out. What can I do besides waiting until everything dries?
Dig a hole and pump the water out
That's why we want only plexiglass domes over the raw land.
I thought we only had clay in the UK!
I am planning to build a retaining wall in red clay in South Wales.
People PREFER clay in many areas. That's the fill thats hauled in.
My property is all clay. And clay sucks! Slip and slide when wet and fine dust when dry. Clay sucks!
Matt, I live in South Africa on a farm. We have black clay for at least 9 meter s(about 20 feet) deep before the next layer of soil. The top's clay content is about 35%. How the devil do you build on it?
Bring in an admixture like lime, disc it in the soil, recompact it, check with geotech engineer and build your building to where water does not enter at your foundation level. French drains and waterproofing will help.
Is expansive foundation sub-grade the same as reactive?
Would a helical post foundation still have problems with expansive clay?
+59seank Depends, but in our area yes. We typically have clay layers that run very deep so we need concrete piers that tunnel down to rock layers below.
hi matt
does building a foundation on expansive clay more expensive than the normal soil ?thanks
Not if you use Wafflemat
Who else keeps misreading expansive as expensive?
I guess the lesson in this video is this: expansive is just expensive spelled with an A instead of an I if you do not build your foundation right.
Hi Matt, I am Creating a Concrete Pool Slab .. How would you recommend preparing an areas for a a 16x16 pool pad poured on clay and water flowing around 1side and two corners of the slab. Would you use a deep footer around all sides of the slab or can you get a way with partial footers as its a small slab.
Where was the tip?
Nice, quick video, Matt. Thanks!
On average, how much does it cost for the survey and engineering report? We have property in Carmine, TX. Six miles north of Round Top.
Thanks!
In Eastern Pennsylvania, it costs $1,500 for a survey and $3,000 for a soil engineering report.
The title was misleading click bait to get you to watch other videos with the answer. If it weren't, you would have called it, "Building: How to recognize clay soils and why knowing is important"
where was the pro tip?
Класс отличный
any common peasant that has dug a few holes knows clay from sand from topsoil.,., but how do you build a solid concrete bunker with a crawl space where if you take one shovel of dirt out of a 12% grade it will start running water.,?.?.,., and f a slab house., they are nothing but problems.,., ';'
the only tip y got was "contract a professional". Ok dude, thanks
woodprix plans has very good designs and plans.
The Plasticity index isn't a clue on how much it's going to move. It's the portion at which the clay is going to act plastic in nature or like play doh as you call it
Summary...
Pro tip: hire an engineer
I’m km:you will r+
Club
Hes never seen a single taco foundation. If he had he'd have had photos.
Boo on you
2:47 = Poopie
Looks like you rolled the soil into a turd
clickbait title