Architect? Civil Engineer? Structural Engineer
Hello,
I am two weeks in on an extensive remodel project of a 2000 sq ft home on a hill side lot in northern ca. We are replacing the slab and adding some new foundation stem walls in a few places. For all intents and purposes we are rebuilding the house. We are set to excavate and start forms next week.
My contractor tells me the drawings for the foundation are light on details and when I ask for details from the archtect they recommend I hire a civil engineer and a soils engineer and a waterproofing expert. I am already paying an architect and a structural engineer. The civil engineer tells me that typically the structural engineer will spec the drainage for the foundation. The structural engineer tells me its out of his expertise.
So, how does this typically work? Who does what? Any advice on how to get this all sorted out? Im just waiting to hear that next I need to bring in a 2×4 expert and a nail expert and a hammer expert.
thanks!
Replies
Fire them all and hire Junkhound.
Or hire Dan and Calvin....<G>
Pretty limited struct engineer if he cannot even do a huse drainage system - wonder how/if he would/could manage the rotational shear on a commercial aircraft wing root - in this state that is what the best paid sturctural engineers do <G-again>
To OP: There is always the internet and public library, DIY.
The drainage is easy, 2" pea gravel, 4" perf corrugated pipe, fill to a foot over the pipe with pea gravel, cover with permeable soil mat, backfill with all the construction drywall cutoffs (and anything else termites dont like) to within 1 ft of surface or as much as it will fill, then dirt. Drain to daylight or redundant sump pumps to infiltration trenches - your local codes likely have the specs for all of that on-line; laws are public domain so simply copy and paste.
e.g. http://kentwa.gov/content.aspx?id=5886 - pretty much everything there, follow some links and you are directed to detailed drawings. I expect your county or city has similar web site.
I'm guessing the "home on a
I'm guessing the "home on a hillside in northern ca" may mean "a house perched on an unstable pile of clay and pea gravel."
It sounds like you are getting it from all sides.
I assume you have permits already. If so the foundation details must have been specific enough to satisfy the building department. They are generally pretty particular about this.
You have a contractor. At the time he bid the job if he had questions about the foundation details he should have asked then, not two weeks into the job. Sounds like he may be trying to jack up the price.
The architect should be able to draw foundation details. That's his job. I assume that he chose the structural engineer. To do calcs. Any civil engineer could have done these for a house. Any soils engineering should have been done prior to the issuance of permits. If soils engineering was necessary the building department would have required it. At this time none should be necessary. Any civil engineering should have been done likewise. If the architect thinks these are needed now, then he didn't do his job. Civil engineering is seldom needed on residential construction unless there is extensive grading and infrastructure work.
It sounds like you're getting it from all sides.
Mike
I would agree with everything you wrote.
and
I would disagree with Junks backfill procedure.
Take the stone all the way up to grade, you shouldn't grow anything that close to the foundation. Debris has no place in backfill-no need for settling you'll need to fill back in later.
DW has stuff planted right up to the concrete - that there gypsum makes good fertilizer. 40 years no problem, the bottom of my backfill even has a few years of broken glass bottles, crockery, and smashed 'tin' cans. Think there is even a few old vinyl 78 rpm records down there.... the archeologists in 2438 need something to find....
Do not have any trees within 15 feet though....
Most junkyards will not take empty propane cylinders - have a few of those in backfills too - fill with water first so they dont float up....
Jimmy Hoffa .. another story, eh?
now that I think of it.
In California there should be a sheet on your plans called "BMPs" or "Best management practices". This includes not only the management of run-off during construction and disposal of construction waste. But should include a drainage plan for run-off on the completed project.
2x4 engineer?
We do have permits and we are paying an architect a ton of money, plus the structural engineer. The contractor is not trying to jack up the price, he is looking at the plans and asking for the info from the architect, who has dropped the ball big time. We were told we would have the plans, to build from, and the town has approved everything, there just isn't the details to build from. I think the architect is just worried about litigation so when we asked for the foundation plans, we were told to hire the civil engineer, the geotechnical engineer, the soils engineer *and* a drainage expert!
Does anyone have a sample plan of what a proper architect would draw up? I can't believe how little detail is in the drawings we paid for. We were led to believe we would get a complete set of drawings, and have more than paid for that. Dont even get me started on the other blunders and the fact we couldnt get the architect to call us back for three weeks
thanks for the rant.
Sounds like your archy is having problems. Could be money problems, could be wife problems, could be drugs, could be depression. Perhaps the next professional to hire is a lawyer.
That doesn't answer the question of how the contractor bid the job without details. What city?
Do you have PDFs or cad files? Can you post them?
sample plan of what a proper architect would draw up
look thru the Kent, WA links posted previously
if too lazy to search that web site, here is a specific
http://www.kentwa.gov/content.aspx?id=23242&terms=infiltration
or the city list of STANDARD PLANS:
http://www.kentwa.gov/content.aspx?id=23242&terms=standard%20plans part of what you specifically asked about is plan 5-26
It is hard to understand how an archy could not have everything (and MORE!) as in the above links right off the top of his head (or hard drive)
tongue in cheek: archy thinks he found 'a live one' with 'tons of money' to spare?
sorry for being so blunt
hmm, next thread, lacking any empathy: why to learn and DIY rather than hiring some bozos or at least learn enough to not hire bozos?
opinion: over the years, have found by comparing notes with others that leaning how to do everything myself actually take LESS TIME than finding someone to do the work. (medical and dental excepted, with internet could even do most of non-surgery medical if we could write our own prescriptions)
caveat: it did take about 25x more time to build my own well drilling rig and drill well - 25x the time spent vs. comparative day job hours to make enough to hire a well driller.....but learned a lot
re:
hill side lot in northern ca
Another thought since you appear to have an incompetent or mediocre archy:
Due to wildfire dangers, many N. CA counties have fire codes that require stucco or other non-combustible exteriors and enclosed overhangs (if any), and low-e windows (for fire!) to prevent fire spread. (youngest son recently built a house in the woods halfway between Sacremento and Tahoe)
Hope you have those on the plans.
FHB back in the 90's had one of their best articles ever on a house standing alone in the middle of a burnt out subdivision where that single surviving house was built as describe above.
are you familiar with this web site?
http://www.fire.ca.gov/general/firemaps.php
Dan, ye shod nere hae stuck moi wit dat sharp stik, now wee went an' scared away da new guy.........
Dan, ye shod nere hae stuck
duplicate
Too little info
Rusty, you're asking some very broad questions. It's easy to answer them for a typical house on a typical lot, but "a hillside lot in California" is kinda scary. Where in CA? Are you at the bottom of the hill or the top? Are there historical water issues? What are your soils like? CA is a big place with a crazy quilt of soil types and soil issues.
Honestly it sounds like many of those responding have little experience with architects or engineers. Nobody is good at everything and your architect is exactly right to tell you he's not an expert in soils, engineering, or whatnot. Along the same lines not every engineer is well versed in every conceivable building situation, so if it's something they don't feel comfortable with they were right to suggest you find someone who is. There is a lot at stake for a building professional if something they put their name on falls apart - everyone enjoys sueing everyone nowdays and I have no doubt that everyone you're working with has no desire to go to court over something outside of their area of expertise.
Having said that it also appears that your contractor shouldn't be doing anything to the foundation until the details are ironed out - why do something you might have to pay to undo and redo? That just doesn't make sense except to the contractor who is just trying to do something to keep gainfully employed.
You're situation isn't unique and there are litterally dozens of people close to you that know what's what - it's just a matter of finding one of them. I've replaced a couple dozen foundations and consulted with a lot of smart people over the years and this is what I'd do:
Call every foundation guy in your area for a recomendation of someone who specializes in hillside foundation fixes. There are a few big names in every town.
Essentially you're looking for an engineer of whatever variety who knows residential building on unstable slopes (or a guy who knows what he's doing beit architect, contractor, soil scientist, or whatnot who works with an engineer, because whatever solution anyone comes up with it will have to have an engineers stamp on it) who will either know the soil conditions in your neighborhood or will pay to have the soil tested for load bearing. Based on that he'll look at what your house requires and any special considerations and come up with the plan.
Now for the bad news......you may not like what he has to say since it's often not as easy as pouring a little extra concrete here and there. If you are sitting on a bed of mush expect to have to underdig your footers and place many feet of more suitable backfill. Or if there's ok load bearing but the hill is slowly moving you may have to scrap your entire foundation and start from scratch to get something that will hang together as you slowly row your boat down the hill over the years. I know of one house that essentially sat on a fat slab chocked full of BIG rebar....I spoke with the engineer on that job and he said the soil under the house will move no matter what - so he had to spec out a concrete barge of sorts that the house sat on.
I've seen other hillside houses that sat on piles driven through the soft surface soil into something with more holding power, or even engineered anchors drilled deep into the harder materials to lock the building lot onto the hill.
My guess is your deliema isn't how to find the right engineer, but you'll have to decide if you put bandaids on what you have and plan on more bandaids down the road as things settle and crack some more, or is it worth it to fix it corrrectly for big $$$$.
I should add that one of the most competent guys in this feild that I've met over the years lives in a house on an unstable lot and every 5 years or so he has to re-level the house. He picked up the house for cheap and it's less expensive for him to simply level the house once in a while rather than do one of the engineering fixes that clients pay him big $$$ for.
From what he and other engineers have said, the biggest problem when working with existing old foundations is they simply aren't reinforced with nearly enough rebar to be a good starting point and nothing will change that short of complete replacment.
As a contractor I'd simply tell you a story of a house near one of my worksites. They asked for a bid to raise the house and replace the basement foundation and they ended up going with a lower bidder who was simply going to reinforced the existing basement. In the end the retrofit had more cost overruns than had I replaced the entire thing, it leaked water, they lost a great deal of useable interior space and the house was never re-leveled so it saggs a few inches here and there.
If it were my personal house and I was living in it, I'd replace the entire foundation in 1/4 increments so you don't have to move out duriing construction. The screw jacks and wood beams used are relatively inexpensive and someone who knows what they are doing will save almost $10k over having the house jacked up all at once, pouring the new foundation and setting it down.
You're right that no one can be expected to know everything, but any competent architect should take care of the details from the very beginning. That's his job and that's why he gets paid the big bucks. The very first thing that should happen on a hill side site is soils engineering. The architect should have brought in a civil engineer who does soils work before he did anything but preliminary design. The engineer may have then needed a geo-technical specialist if the job required. Most likely the same engineering firm could have done the structural work. An architect is hired, not simply because he is a draftsman, but because he can put together a team of specialists. Managing that team is as much a part of the job as drawing plans. If the architect tells the owner that the owner needs to hire someone to do soils work at this late date it is because the architect didn't do his job at the beginning when the soils work should have been done and he is not doing his job now because it is part of an architect's job to to solve problems not just to pass them on. I've been doing residential design for almost 40 years and have worked with architects and engineers. This is how the process is supposed to work. It evidently didn't in this case.
An owner can hire an engineer to do the soils and structural work and a draftsman to do the plans and save big bucks, but then he would own the problems.
The local building agency should not have approved plans with insufficient detail.
The contractor should not have bid on drawings with insufficient detail.
I disagree that every architect should act as the center of the project - it depends on what the architect is good at and what the agreement is with the clients. Not all architects have good working relationships with specialists, and not all clients want them to. In many situations specific engineering isn't done by the architect at all, such as truss design, pre-stressed concrete, and manufacturer-specific solutions such as SIPs and whatnot. If you were to insist that an architect take care of all those I'd think you left your tree - most contractors I know would insist on taking care of those loose ends. Having said that, on large projects it seems the architect is more likely to be used to manage those relationships, but for an additional fee.
Nothing in construction is cut and dried so anything is possible - I could pay my engineer to contract with an architect to hire someone else to hire someone else to hire whoever I like.
I know a handfull of architects specializing in design that can't chew gum and walk through a job site at the same time - I definitely don't want them managing something requiring a lot of engineering solutions that involve things other than standard wood construction because they don't have a background that gives them a sence of even what kind of questions to ask, let alone any input that would aid the guys actually doing the work.
Things like: trusses, pre-stressed concrete, and sips are not loose ends. They will have a profound affect on the appearance and the integrity of any structure. Any architect calling for their use better have a pretty good idea that they are appropriate. If this entails getting the opinion of an engineer specialist then the architect better get on the phone.
On most plans the architect states, "....to be designed by others...," in those situations and no - the architect doesn't have to know spit about designing any of it that's outside his expertise.
Even within normal residential wood construction, architects often leave out details in stairs because they don't have the background in stair construction to even draw something that resembles what the stair builder will provide, and they don't need to know those things in every situation.
For nearly a year I worked on a commercial project with two licensed architects on payroll and they passed on designing anything that involved cabinetry since our cabinet makers were also pretty good designers and we had a better feel for what the end users would and wouldn't like from a usability standpoint. We'd take "insperation" photos from the interior designer and translate that into a design that looks good while being practical to build - that drawing would evolve with further input from the designer and other stakeholders and then it would go to the architects to be worked into the overall building design, sometimes with modifications, sometimes as we drew it.
So your recommendation is to have a cabinetmaker design the foundation?
"What's that reversed-looking
"What's that reversed-looking footer detail?"
"It's a toe kick.....duh."
lol
Its hard to know whether your architect is a bum or just doing the right thing. Some of it depends on the scope of your agreement with him. Did you get a copy? Did you read it? Given the tendency for California houses on hills to end up at the bottom of the hill (or end up with the hill on top of them), it would appear prudent on his part to NOT put that together. He may not even be bonded/insured to do so.