I bought a little lot in a town in Central America with my wife.
The lot is about 8×15 meters and I am planning to use cmu blocks to build a 2 story building/house with a flat roof. I am planning to have the exterior a load bearing wall with the standard 20x40cm block and with a interior load bearing wall around the garage with arches for support in the living room area.
The lot mostly clear with only grass and it forms a sort of valley. It is surrounded by buildings on all 3 sides and the dirt road in front.
Instead of laying down a slab on grade with deeper integraded rc beams for the load bearing walls. Could I start digging trenches and laying down a robust foundations for the walls and build the walls first? and then later lay down the slabs within the interior of the house with all the walls are finished?
Thanks,
Jonathan
Replies
In the US it's fairly normal to build a CMU foundation (with poured concrete, rebar-reenforced footings) and then pour a slab inside. Virtually every house in this neighborhood is built this way.
It is normal, however, to use a fiber spacer around the perimeter of the slab, to allow for some expansion/contraction. And I suspect it would be wise to put vertical rebar in the lower part of the CMU wall and fill at least some of the cores with concrete, up maybe a meter, to make the wall more resistant to lateral forces. (Others here are no doubt better versed in the construction details.)
(And I suspect there are varying circumstances where you should/shouldn't have rebar extending from the foundation to "lock" to the slab.)