Papercrete can work very well and be adapted to any standard foundation system.
No matter what a building is constructed with above ground, it will only be as good as its foundation.
I strongly suggest you look and ask around your local area. What types of foundations are in use supporting buildings near you that have lasted for a long period of time? No need to reinvent the wheel if you don't have to.
It is impossible to recommend a foundation system to you without knowing more about the climate where you live, the type of soil you intend to build upon, the details of the structure you want that foundation to hold up, whether or not you are in a seismic/earthquake zone, the materials and tools you have available to you, and your budget.
Regardless of the type of foundation you choose, it's also critical that it be constructed properly. Even the most perfectly engineered foundation will be garbage if it is not installed correctly and your building will suffer as a result.
A few things to consider.
WATER IS THE ENEMY OF BUILDINGS.
Site your building in the proper location. It is almost always best to build on high ground. This goes a long way in solving drainage problems. WATER IS THE ENEMY. Keep it away from your structure. This begins with where you choose to build your stucture, how you build your foundation, and continues with every step along the way. The walls, the windows, the roof, the exterior stucco or cladding. Even consider water on the interior. Where will water vapor go? Condensation can lead to mold. At some point after you finish your foundation, you will want to backfill and grade the ground surrounding your structure such that water will drain AWAY from the building. Every detail in construction you should be thinking about water and where it could possibly come from and where it will go.
Evaluate your soil. The ideal place to build a structure is on BEDROCK. This is always the best strongest location to build. However, in many areas it is not practical to build on solid bedrock.
Organic soils should be REMOVED. This is the top layer of soil that plants tend to grow in. Even sandy desert areas have a top layer where plants tend to grow. Never build on top of organic soil. No matter what, dig below where the plants tend to live. If you see plant roots... keep digging. You want your foundation to rest upon firm undisturbed inorganic subsoil. Some areas that can be a few inches below the surface. In other areas it can be many feet down.
Available materials. What is already close by? Is there a source of gravel or rock on your property? Perhaps you should consider designing your foundation to use those materials? Is someone demolishing something nearby? Often you can get free "Urbanite" simply for hauling it away. "Urbanite" is blocks of concrete that can be stacked up. Remember, concrete is simply a manmade stone. Google image search "Urbanite Foundation" and you'll see many examples.
Gravel Filled Earthbag foundations are also an inexpensive option worth considering. I could discuss details an virtues of Gravel Filled Earthbags, but if you google "Owen Geiger Earthbag Foundaton" he can give you all the details much better than I could. He is the Guru of Earthbags. Don't be afraid to search YouTube for Owen Geiger's earthbag videos either.
Tire foundations are also inexpensive, but they are perhaps the most difficult in terms of raw physical labor. You sure can build an extremely strong foundation with them, though. You could build a near bomb proof bunker from tires, but only if you are young, full of energy and in fantastic physical condition. Do not undertake any tire project lightly.
Do you want a basement? If you do, things become more complicated. While a gravel filled earthbag foundation or a tire foundation can incorporate a basement, it's a lot of work. Poured concrete or cement block is more typical and easier to get approved by building inspectors, but it's also more expensive. Also, water and drainage issues become even more important when a basement is involved.
One very inexpensive foundation option that usually is fairly easy build and also happens to be fairly easy to get code approved is a Pier and Beam foundation. Constructing it is as simple as digging post holes to below frost depth, filling them with appropriate steel reinforcement and concrete, then laying beams across those piers. It is rather like putting a building on short stilts. Think of a Pier and Beam foundation as a common wooden backyard deck ON STEROIDS. The area under the house is a crawl space that can serve as an area to run mechanical systems and sometimes even serve as storage. This system is often used on extremely uneven ground or on steeper slopes. It can be built entirely by hand, or with the help of equipment. It is very important make your piers tall enough to leave room to work under the structure when needed, but not so tall as to make the structure less stable. Angled cross braces should always be used to keep the piers vertical. Lots of information about Pier and Beam foundations is available on the web.
Any foundation will require a drainage system. Remember, WATER IS THE ENEMY. As mentioned earlier, the first line of defense is to build on high ground, that way water will naturally tend to drain away from the building. The second line of defense is often some type of appropriately place gravel trench, with a French Drain "tile" intalled. Modern "French Drains" use perforated corrogated plastic pipe to allow water to drain out and away from foundations. Of course, you have to give that water a place to drain to. If you have build on top of a hill, that's easy, just let it drain down the hill. If you have built on a slope, you can simply allow it to drain down to daylight and down the slope. If you are trying to build at the bottom of the hill... you may have built your house in the wrong place, because now you will have to have some type of pumping system to pump out the water whenever it rains. NOT IDEAL.
Lastly, but certainly not least. ANCHOR ANCHOR ANCHOR. It is not enough to build a strong foundation and simply set a building on top of it. You must securely fasten every part of your building DOWN to the foundation. Your walls should be securely attached to it. Your roof should have extremely strong connections, often through the walls, all the way down to your foundation. This is fundamental. If you do not securely attach your structure to your foundation, a big wind might blow all your hard work away some day. This would be a very bad way to wake up in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm only to find out you have a gargantuan skylight that didn't use to be there. When you bed is soaking wet from the rain... then you wet the bed more from your bladder when you realize your roof has blown away. Nobody wants to wet the bed. It's just too embarrassing. Save yourself the embarrassment and bolt/tie/strap/everything down so that the entire building is one heavy chunk all the way from the top of your roof down the the bottom of your foundation.
Think of a roof as a big airplane wing. It's just waiting for a big wind to come along so it can fly away. Your roof needs to be attached very securely so that the wind must lift not only your roof, but the many tones of weight in your foundation in order to move it.
This post is NOT intended to give you every detail about how to build your foundation. It's only intended to give you a starting point and a brief overview in how to think about foundations for whatever you might want to build. Every structure is different, every climate is different, every building site is different. You must adapt to your situation.
This post is getting pretty long, and I guess this is as good a place to stop as any. I have not covered everything, not that I possibly could if I wanted to try. Hopefully there is some tidbit of information for someone reading this post to get them thinking and Google Searching various foundation concepts and options.
Other very important foundation topics I haven't even attempted to cover: Insulated Foundations, Radon Gas control, foundation vapor barriers, Slab on Grade foundations, Wood Foundations (yes in some places wood foundations are common), Rubble STONE foundations (not to be confused with Rubble Trench), Stone Masonry foundations, Seismic reinforced foundations, and more topics too numerous to mention. My typing fingers are getting tired, and it's 5:15am for me right now and I've droned on so long, and I'm getting punchy. I'm probably putting everyone reading this long boring message to sleep by now. SO WAKE UP...EVERYONE. I'm almost finished. In fact, I'm seriously thinking about skipping running spell check on this gargantuan post and simply apologizing to everyone for whatever spelling errors I have made. Forgive my mistakes and focus on the foundation information please.
I hope someone finds something in this post helpful.
--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, "waterengineman101" <shanerileyservices@...> wrote:
>
> Walls and roofs seem to be the easy part. But what about foundations? I don't know how heavy papercrete is but I am betting a lot of it would weigh something, see? And so you don't want the ground to shift and crack your hard work, or worse, break it. So Does anybody have some stories on foundations? Does a person dig a trench and fill it with papercrete? Does a person dig a a square, then a couple channels across and then just pour papercrete on top of it all? What?
>
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