![]() ![]() Drainage issues will be greatly simplified as well. I would highly recommend going with Dan's advice and excavating to one single grade as staging the heavy materials on my site would have been very difficult without the equipment that I have (all terrain forklift can boom out a 1 yard load of cob around 15' for placement). I generally reverse the slope of the tiers into the slope of the hill. My little cottage is multiple levels, tiered foundations under the cob, but I am on top of a dry hill in a dry climate. The only real hassle was that I installed a 4' rollup door that did not seal at all at the edges, and so ended up going back and putting in a standard exterior door. ![]() I never cut the top level slab for expansion, but seven years later it is flawless - not even a hairline crack. Fill would have been over 9k, the core-floor, crane, and lower level slab ran just under 8k. Although mostly used for parking garages and banks, the core-floor package was much cheaper than the fill for a 30'x33' hole 10' deep. We also literally saved money by installing core-floor (giant cable tensioned hollow core concrete slabs) over the garage excavation. The home spanned 26' feet of soil elevation from top to bottom by the time it was complete. Each level was excavated to the level of the footers, instead of backfilling the lowest part of the basement, we created a sunken living room with a 14' ceiling on the lower level - the client was an african big game hunter and this allowed him to display his cape buffalo mounts. I have built a traditional/conventional style home that stepped in tiers down a very steep hill. ![]() I highly recommend you dig out the site to one grade, and do put in a gravity wall. As well my posts piers will have excellent frost protection as they are all just inside my straw walls. This trench does not support any of the actual structure of the home so it only supports about 120 lbs per linear foot rather than several tons. I put in a crushed stone trench with a grade beam that has a french drain at the bottom to hold the straw bales. This requires significantly less concrete. One other step I took to simplify the design and build is to do post and beam rather than footers and stem walls. If you look up gravity wall it will explain to you exactly why and how you need to do this, and you should find a good calculator to determine the proper engineering for it. If you dig out the floor to grade you will need to build a gravity wall on your west wall, the high side. The reason is it will simplify the build as well as I wont have steps all up in my hizzy. What I have is a change of about 6' from my west to east walls. I am currently building now and have the same issue to contend with. So, question: Do I have to level the site down to the lowest level, then build my foundation on that level surface, then build the floor levels back up with fill dirt and tamping? Or can I start with the floor levels, save digging and take advantage of the already compacted dirt and find a way to build the foundation around that? In other words, does the foundation have to be level or can it be sloped/tiered to conform to the slope of the hill? I hope this makes sense. Am I making sense? But if I start with floor level changes from the beginning, then I would have to build a foundation/stem wall on a slope, or tiered. I thought that if I could start with these floor levels before I start the rubble trench and foundation, it would save digging down 41" on the west side, which is what I'd have to do to get the whole site level as a starting point. My thought was to take advantage of the slope and just plan for floor level changes that go with the natural level of the slope a raised kitchen on west side and a sunken living/dining room on east side. In other words, the west wall is 41" higher than the east wall. It loses about 41 inches from the west wall to the east wall. I just took the Cob Cottage Company workshop, but we didn't get very deep into floors and foundations (no pun intended).
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