Authors:
John Carmody
Garrett Mosiman
Daniel Handeen
Center for Sustainable Building Research, University of Minnesota
Patrick Huelman
Cold Climate Housing Program, University of Minnesota
Jeffrey Christian
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
The authors would like to thank Sam Taylor, Mark LaFrance and Eric Werling for supporting this effort through the Department of Energy (DOE) Building Technologies Office and Building America program. The authors would also like to thank Jeffrey Christian, William Craddick, Roderick Jackson and Andre Desjarlais from ORNL for their management of this effort as it has progressed. In addition, they would like to thank the community of foundation experts from the U.S. and Canada for their valuable input.
This handbook represents the culmination of foundation construction advice that began with the publishing of the Building Foundation Design Handbook (Labs et al., 1988), a more extensive technical reference manual on foundation design. The original handbook was intended for architects and engineers, while this handbook is intended to serve builders. This document is an updated version of the Builder’s Foundation Handbook (Carmody et al.), originally published in 1991, which was in turn reformatted as a website.
In April 2007, an Expert Meeting was held at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). At that meeting, it was decided that the Builder’s Foundation Handbook had lagged behind current understanding and recent research in the field and its revision was made a priority by DOE. This document is the result of those revisions.
Development of this material was sponsored by the U.S. Government through subcontract 4000108966 with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, managed by UT-BATTELLE, LLC for the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.
