Hello Greg,
I am in the SF Bay Area. There is a concrete patio in front of the entrance door.
What I want to do is to extend it to the end of side of the house and in the future I may extend the front wall of a bedroom over the patio for more space.
The house is one story with stucco siding.
The area is about 9.5 ft L x 4 ft W and the exiting patio is 7 in deep.
There is an outside hose bib there and two foundation vents.
Current foundation is a stem wall foundation.
The soil is clay and sandy in some area.
I plan to pour a monolithic slab foundation with 6 in thick for the slab portion. I will tie it to the existing patio and foundation.
My questions are:
1. The two foundation vents will be partially covered. I don’t know of a way to move the foundation vents. Any suggestions?
2A. To extend the hose bid and have the copper pipes buried in the concrete, do I need to wrap the pipe? What do I wrap the copper pipe with? PVC tape or a PVC sleeve? Do you have a better solution/suggestion?
2B. The copper pipe is about 1.5″ to 2″ below the current patio level which will be the weak point in the concrete. Do I need to reroute it lower, to about 3 in, to be embedded into the concrete?
Thank you for your help.
Replies
The International Residential Code (IRC) has requirements for venting crawl spaces. See the attached or you can find it on line. Make sure it is the current edition adopted by your municipality. It gives formulas for the required vent areas and options to reduce the area by using a vapor retarder or power ventilation.
Do not cast the water line in the slab. It will crack the slab and most likely freeze and cause even worse damage. It will need to be buried beneath the frost line for your area. Check with your local code official. In the Bay Area it is probably 12".