Well my next house will have piers after working in the home building industry I can fully justify the cost. But since most if not all home builders are in it for the money and not quality product they will reduce beams and cables in post tension designs to save a few bucks and your home will settle and crack.
Wow. Looks like I missed some of the discussion there before it was deleted. Always hate missing the good forums bickering.
I was inspired to get into model railroading by a book on John Allen. I forget the name of it, the author, or the publisher but I was about 13-14 and saw it at my local library - I remember that I checked it out for as long as they would let me keep it and spent hours reading it and looking at the pictures. One that I remember most was the underground car lot made larger with mirrors (at least I think the garage was underground).
Funny that I never knew he lived in Monterey - as I lived there for several years (Soledad Dr., a stones-throw from Cielo Vista Terrace) and nearby for many more. Not sure when he passed away but I would loved to have met him and gotten a layout tour before it went away. Don’t know a thing about foundations 
though I do know that a lot of rebuilds in Monterey go right over whatever existing parts of a structure are still serviceable so there’s a good chance.
M
UnionPacific, what residential application calls for tensioning cables?
Curious!!! You guys notice this thread is around seven years old?? Goes to prove that if you haven’t read the book ,its a new one. But now we see how legends are created.
Mostl homes in the Dallas Fort Worth area use post tension slabs. I worked for two home builders and that is all they used. The gook we call dirt here is unstable and can swell or shrink just due to wet or dry conditions. I can’t count how many customers who purchased a home and didnt keep their slab wet as directed suffered a failed foundation due to heaving of the soil.
In fact, it was broken up among two or three new owners. I don’t believe that any one of them has reassembled any portion of the layout currently. Some remaining less re-usable parts of it were simply scrapped. The road’s rolling stock was mostly sold off or given away.
CNJ831
Good Morning Sports Fans,
A couple of things about Monterey and Pacific Grove to further confuse the issue. Water, and the shortage of it, is a problem here and building or re-building a house has been a political exercise for many years. This has lead to some interesting(strange) rules. “New” construction is not easy to get approved. This means you need to “remodel” and existing structure. Often an existing house is purchased not for it’s looks or floor plan, but rather for it’s water credits. The house is then razed and a new one built, having no more water features (showers, sinks, tubs, baths etc) than the old house (unless you can buy some credits). As a result, some old houses with outdoor showers and lots of spickets for yard use are very valuable because each existing water fixture is granfathered in and gives you a credit.
Since you are “remodeling”, you are not allowed to totally destroy the existing house. Therefore you leave/incorporate one wall (or some other architectural feature) of the existing house into the new house, therefore you “remodeled”. So it is not impossible and in fact probable an old foundation, or parts of it is reused when building “new”.
There is a story about one gentleman, who happened to own a water company, that when the city wouldn’t approve water for his new house, simply built the house anyway, installing a 20,000 gallon water tank onsite and had his company’s truck come by and fill the tank as necessary. Appearently, he later came to some agreement with the city and got hooked up to the city system.
It takes all kinds…and we have quite a few in this area…
Tilden
Since you are “remodeling”, you are not allowed to totally destroy the existing house. Therefore you leave/incorporate one wall (or some other architectural feature) of the existing house into the new house, therefore you “remodeled”. So it is not impossible and in fact probable an old foundation, or parts of it is reused when building “new”.
It’s amazing what you can get by “remodeling”. A few years ago, someone bought a modest house built in the 1950’s that’s on the next block up from us. He “remodeled” an approximately 1300 sq ft ranch into a 2 story McMansion that probably approached 4,000 sq ft and took up nearly all the land on the lot.
Andre
That’s going on here also. I have a friend who lives in an old neighborhood and there are gigantic homes being built around her. So silly step off the porch and into the street oh and no large room for trains how ridiculous!
I was visiting Steve Prevette in the Pasco area and looking at his very fine N scale layout. Somewhere in the conversation the topic of John Allen came up, at which point Steve relayed to me how he had been at Fort Ord in the military in 1972 and wanted to go visit the Gorre & Daphetid.
He got some leave and he had John’s address, so he drove to the location. Construction workers were cleaning out the basement and piling all the debris in a pile, when Steve learned from them John has passed away and a fire had gutted the basement! In the pile of debris were bits and pieces of the railroad roadbed, so Steve asked if he could take a few pieces – they said “be our guest!”.
Then Steve pulled out a few pieces of G&D roadbed and showed them to me. Wow, what a flood of emotions! Here, in my hands, were the remains of a once great model railroad that I had dreamed of getting to see in person. Now this I finally got to “see” some of it in person, here was all that was left of it, a few scraps of roadbed with some ballast and ties on it.
Even getting to look at the few roadbed scraps of the old G&D that day was something I won’t ever forget. Too bad I couldn’t have seen it when the layout was intact … [wow]
Years ago when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old ( about 1961 and 1962), I used to ride my bicycle to the library and look through book after book about model trains. One of those books had a lot of pictures of John Allens model railroad. I couldn’t tell you today what the title was or the publisher, but I fopund it fascinating, and spent several afternoons at the library just looking and dreaming!
There were other layouts shown, but all I could do was look and dream!
TheK4Kid
Several libraries in the SF Bay Area have the book on Allen’s layout and also a lot of the Kalmbach publications-both new and old.
Chances are it would have a new foundation as this is a high seismic area and the building codes have become stricter.
I wonder howmany railroad pilgrims knock on the door everyday…
Cheers,
Obr
I’m so glad that I’m back building in New England where 99% of homes are perched on their 10 or 12" poured concrete foundations. A min of 4-5 Ft below the frost line to a full perimerter footing with rebar and keys for wall anchoring. I spent many years in CA in the building trade. You know those gargantuas homes built on nothing more than a concrete slab- or should I say a concrete sled that is just waiting for the adobe clay to become satureated to the point to allow the house to slip down any hillside that it was propped up upon. For the life of me I couldn’t figure why the building codes didn’t demand a system of pier footers and grade beams. I used to say that the only thiong keeping these things in position was the plumbing. Which also is a complete joke. Older homes had thinwall copper rolled out on the thin sand layer before the concrete was poured. I would like a dollar for every slab I knew that had to be broken to repair the plumbing under it. Newer materials and codes allow poly piping, but its use has yet to be detemined as to it’s longevity. My brother in Round rock, Tx was appalled at the building practices there on all the slew of huge new homes being thrown together. That particular area is almost all shale. Push the little topsoil if any away scrape a perimeter 1ft footing form and pour. Here in the northeast, I do more of a footing for a very large backyard shed. Where did these codes ever come from? So I can sort of see where your coming from, but there,s nothing like a solid poured concrete foundation sitting on a full footing
I live in northeast Indiana and my home is built exceptionally well.It was built by a contractor for himself, so everything is better than it had to be.I have a solid oak staircase into my basement, each step individually shimmed by an Amishman who help3ed build the house.My overhead rafters are twice as many as what was called for.My foundation wals are 14 inches thick, and the back wall in the basement for about 40 feet is 28 inches thick, because when the poured the first span, it started to crack, so they doubled it and bolted the two spans together.
I set on high ground and my basement is very dry.Never have had mositure problems.
My private workshop for my other hobby( airplanes and old muscle cars is a converted chicken coop. with concrete block walss.Years ago( about 1966, my Uncle who originally owned it, and used it for a private workshop and engineering center for his boat company renovated the building.First he took the entire roof off , then rebuilt it, using DOUBLE “W” CHERRY TRUSSES every 20 inches! along all of its 100 foot length. Before the roof went back on, my other Uncle (a building contactor added additional concret blocks all the wa=y around to raise the height of the building and the ceilings inside.
At the same time, they dug the inside floor out( mostly dirt, went down 54 inches, and started pouring concrete, using old railraod rails like rebar, going bacl and forth every couple of feet.
So in thesummertime the concrete floor stays cool and helps cool the building, and in the wintertime, the ground is warmer at 54 inches deep, so it helps keep the building warm inside.
I was going to originally use it for my trains, but I’d have to air condition and heat it for additional climate control, and isn’t totally watertight, so mositure would be a problem.
So heating a 40 by 100 foot building and additional climate control in the summer would be expensive.
Me and my buddy don’t use it much in the winter, but more so in the sp
Name a for-profit business that isn’t “in it for the money”. That’s kinda the defining characteristic, wouldn’t you say?
KL
As with all free enterprise, there is a fine line dividing being profitable and being greedy.
The sad thing is that many of us would pay a little extra for a better built house (or skip the granite countertop). Many improvements at contruction time don’t cost a lot more, but are expensive to retrofit. And the buyer doesn’t know, that’s what the builder is supposed to cover.
Enjoy
Paul
IR, that is so true. I’m employed by a manufacturer of a precast concrete basement wall system. It comes STANDARD with 2 1/2" DOW insulation and galvanized studding installed WITH a 15 year no-leak guarantee. Now when the builder offers the potential homeowners the preliminary costs our wall system is about 10-30% more than a masonry block wall or poured in place concrete wall. What the builder USUALLY fails to tell the homeowners is that we are cheaper in the long run. No framers needed to stud out a block or concrete wall, no insulation needed, and we can usually be in and out of the job in one single day. instead many homeowners skimp on the hidden stuff (plumbing, framing and electrical) and go all out on countertops and the fancy brass kitchen fixtures.
I would rather see them spend on the difficult items to replace and go cheaper on the easy stuff which can be worked in when ever they can.
Just my [2c]