Plain answers on helical piles and new foundations in Colorado, from frost depth and swelling clay to codes, costs and what an engineer puts on the drawings. Looking for our earlier posts? They are on Our Articles.
A detached ADU in Denver gets the same foundation scrutiny as a house, on a backyard you can barely get a truck into. Here's how slab, crawlspace and helical pile foundations compare, and what the city requires.
Read More »A grade beam is a reinforced concrete beam that spans between piers or piles instead of sitting on the soil. On Colorado clay, that's the point. Here's how pier-and-grade-beam foundations work and how one gets built.
Read More »A ground-mounted solar array is only as steady as the posts under it. Here is how a solar ground mount installation goes in Colorado, and how to choose between concrete piers, driven posts and helical piles.
Read More »A helical anchor and a helical pile can be the same piece of steel. What changes is the load direction, and that changes the depth, the bracket and the test. Here's how to tell which one your project needs.
Read More »Pole barn foundations get sized for gravity and forgotten for uplift. In Colorado, wind and elevation-driven snow loads change the math. Here's how embedded posts, concrete piers and helical piles compare.
Read More »In Colorado, "caisson" usually means a drilled concrete pier under a grade beam, the standard answer to swelling clay for decades. Here is how one gets built, what goes wrong, and when helical piles do the same job.
Read More »Soil heave on the Front Range comes in two kinds: swelling clay and heaving bedrock. They need different foundation answers, and a new build has to be designed for the right one.
Read More »A manufacturer certificate is a start. Here is what the code and the evaluation reports actually require of a helical pile installer, and the questions to ask before you sign.
Read More »A helical pile's capacity is set by the weakest of the soil, the shaft, the couplings and the helix plates, then cut in half for safety. Here is how torque, load tests and the install log fit together.
Read More »Frost heave isn't just water expanding as it freezes. It's ice lenses pulling water up from below and growing until they lift whatever sits on top. Here's how it works, which soils are worst, and how footings and piles are designed to stay out of its reach.
Read More »Helical piles hold up houses, decks and boardwalks, hold down towers and canopies, and resist sideways loads on signs and solar racks. Here are 14 new-construction uses, sorted by the kind of load each one carries.
Read More »Published prices for deck helical piles run a few hundred dollars per pile installed. The total depends on how many piles your framing needs, how deep they go and how hard the site is to reach. Here is how to build the number yourself.
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