How to determine which foundation is the best for the bath, and make the best choice?

The stability and longevity of your bath depend greatly on the foundation you choose. The foundation supports the weight and makes sure your entire bath structure stays sturdy over time. It acts as the bedrock upon which it rests. Knowing how to choose the ideal foundation requires taking into account a number of variables, including the kind of bath you’re building and the state of the soil.

The kind of soil on your construction site should be one of your first priorities. The drainage characteristics and load-bearing capacities of various soil types differ. For instance, sandy soil rapidly drains water but may need more support to hold large, weighty structures like bathtubs. Although clay soil can support more weight, it can have drainage issues and may require specialized foundations to keep from settling.

When choosing a foundation, your bath’s weight and size are also important considerations. Stronger foundations are needed for larger baths and those with extra features like saunas or large water tanks in order to distribute the weight evenly and avoid sinking or shifting over time. It is crucial to calculate the total weight and confirm that the foundation you have selected can support it without strain.

Groundwater levels and the local climate are important additional factors. High water table or frequently rainy regions may require foundations with drainage and waterproofing features. Maintaining a dry and stable foundation for your bathroom is essential to preventing problems down the road, such as mildew, mold, and even structural damage.

Lastly, when choosing the ideal foundation for your bath, speaking with a licensed architect or structural engineer is strongly advised. In addition to ensuring compliance with regional building codes and regulations, they can evaluate the particular site conditions you have and suggest suitable foundation types, such as pier, strip, or concrete slab foundations. Their knowledge can assist you in making a choice that will guarantee your bath lasts for many years.

Features of the operation of the steam room and the base

One particular kind of structure whose operation necessitates heavy water consumption is the personal bath. Mostly the paired and washing compartments are affected by this. The temperature in the bathhouse also changes dramatically. All of this has an impact on the unique specifications for the home sauna’s supporting base.

Periodic heating

Boilers, which run on either solid or liquid fuel, can be electric and provide heat for modern baths.

When people are coming in, warm up the steam room and soap department. The construction is cold for the remainder of the time.

That is, there are noticeable temperature swings inside the sauna on a regular basis.

Pay heed. Unexpected temperature swings and elevated humidity within the bathhouse can have a negative impact on the foundation’s state. As a result, it’s critical to insulate the building’s base floor against heat and moisture.

Availability of a washing station

During a bathing session, a lot of water is used in the sink. A drain is installed in the foundation as part of a specialized drainage system that removes wastewater, or waste water. If drainage is not done, moisture will eventually destroy the foundation in addition to the structure.

Types of supporting structures

Several foundation types, including strip, columnar, pile, pile-screw, and slab, are used to build bath structures, depending on the soil conditions.

Tape

The most common kind of foundation for buildings and other structures is a strip foundation that runs the length of the load-bearing walls. Precast or monolithic concrete can be used as a continuous mass for the supporting structure. With the exception of foam and gas blocks, practically any masonry material can be used to build the bathhouse strip.

The base of the tape may be deep or shallow. When the depth of the freezing soil is less than one meter, the first option is used for baths. If deeper water is needed, the situation switches to constructing a pile field.

The building’s computed supporting area is used to determine the tape’s width. The specific load from the structure’s weight and the resistivity of the soil layer bearing the load—which should be greater than the load—are used to determine how much to adjust the value of this parameter.

Crucial! The base of the strip is closed. Vents or ventilation holes are made in the tape’s walls to keep extra moisture from building up beneath the structure. Additionally, a drain pipe is introduced through the tape’s opening.

Columnar

Often, a series of point supports are built along the perimeter of load-bearing walls instead of tape to save money on materials. A multitude of materials are used to build columns. They excavate holes beneath them and fill them with crushed stone and sand, then compact the soil.

After that, the formwork is put in place, and concrete is poured inside after a number of reinforcement bars are lowered vertically. In other instances, natural stone, brick, cinder blocks, or rubble are used to arrange the pillars.

Made of asbestos or metal pipes reinforced with cement mortar is an intriguing alternative. The same formula used to calculate the tape is also used to determine the building’s supporting area. The size of each support’s area and the typical distance—between one and 1.5 meters—are used to calculate the number of pillars.

When building a bathhouse with a columnar foundation, a space is created between the building’s ceiling and the ground. The pillars around the building’s perimeter are shielded by fences to keep chilly air from stealing heat from the bathhouse during the winter.

Citation.A grillage connects columnar supports to form a single bathhouse supporting system. A frame structure made of brick, timber, boards, steel profiles (I-beams, channel), and other materials is called a grillage.

See a different article for more details on the characteristics of building a columnar foundation for a bathhouse.

Pile

When the load-bearing soil layer is very deep and building a strip or columnar foundation is not feasible financially due to high construction costs, piles are required. Driven structures are called piles. Using a hammer or a mechanical impact device called a piledriver, they are manually driven in.

A sequence of point supports spaced at the same intervals as the pillars (1 – 1.5 m) around the perimeter of the load-bearing walls constitutes the pile field in the plan.

Metal piles and reinforced concrete are manufactured structures. They have a specific rated load-bearing capacity when they are produced. Consequently, it is simple to compute the necessary number of piles for the design length once the laying depth (the distance between the lower limit of soil freezing and the groundwater level) has been established. This is accomplished by dividing the bathhouse’s total load by one pile’s load-bearing capacity.

Peculiarities. Generally speaking, wooden materials are used to build steam rooms. Logs that have been stripped of bark, treated with antiseptics, and coated with bitumen are used as the foundation for small bathhouses. After being driven into the ground, they are fastened with boards or wood.

Pile-screw

The development of screw piles in civil engineering allowed for the fast construction of foundations on practically any kind of soil. Soils that contain large debris inclusions or are rocky are exceptions when it comes to screw supports. In just a few hours, a pile foundation can be built for even the largest sauna plan—six by five meters.

For piles up to two meters in length, screw rods are manually screwed into the ground. With a gas cutter or circular saw, excess metal is removed from the upper ends of the installed pipes with blades to create a single level. After that, the ends of the pipes are welded with metal platforms. A grillage constructed of steel channel, wooden beams, or another material is used to tie the pile heads.

Slab

Where the load-bearing soil layer is very deep below the weak soil layers on top, a monolithic slab is built. The slab minimizes the specific load from the bathhouse because of its large support area. On soft soil, the reinforced concrete platform appears to float. The sauna’s base is situated on soil that is peaty, loamy, or even swampy.

The layer of fertile soil must be removed before the slab can be installed. Next, two 100 mm-thick layers of sand and crushed stone are applied over the entire surface. They’re compacting the pillow. A reinforced frame is laid on the site, and formwork is installed around the perimeter. The concrete solution is then applied. Thirty days later, the formwork is taken down and the bathhouse’s construction gets underway.

What materials are used?

Cheaper varieties of bases are primarily utilized in steam rooms. It might be:

  • columnar supports made of brick or stone;
  • wooden piles treated with impregnations – wooden sleepers are often used;
  • reinforced concrete elements in the form of FBS blocks, curbs and other suitable concrete building elements;
  • plastic, metal and asbestos-cement pipes for pile foundations.

Citation. For monolithic and prefabricated foundations, classic material options include reinforced concrete, and for pile supports, metal.

Deepening type

There are three types of bathhouse foundations: non-deepened, shallow, and deepened, depending on how far below the surface the supporting foundation is buried.

Shallow

On firm or heaving soil, this kind of supporting foundation is built. The foundation is entirely on the earth’s surface, supported by a cushion of sand and gravel. The benefit of non-deepened foundations is that the bathhouse’s foundation is not vulnerable to soil heaving forces since it is not situated near groundwater or soil freezing zones.

There are three types of non-deepened foundations: slab, columnar, and strip. This kind of foundation is typically used for homestead structures, such as baths and saunas.

Shallow

It is important to distinguish this type of bathhouse foundation from the one that came before it. These structures can be as deep as one meter.

  • The most popular type of structure for baths is a shallow strip foundation. It is erected from monolithic and prefabricated reinforced concrete, and strips are also laid out from rubble, brick and wild stone – flagstone.
  • A columnar foundation can be shallow. The main condition for the construction of such foundations is that the depth of soil freezing should not be more than 300 mm, and groundwater should be below 2 m.

Vital. A drainage system is built around the base if groundwater during spring floods gets near to the earth’s surface. A system of asbestos pipes used for drainage is situated at the base of the building and slopes away from it. A water outflow is made to the sump.

Recessed

A foundation that has a base depth of more than 1.5 to 2 meters is referred to as buried. In order to build a basement, a pit must be dug for the construction of deep structures. Recessed foundations are not used for private structures like bath houses. Alternatively, screw supports or piles are employed.

The correct type selection is essential to creating a strong foundation for your bath. The type of soil, the climate where you live, and your budget are important considerations. Simple concrete pads for stable soils are one option; deeper, more intricate options, like strip or raft foundations, are better suited for softer ground or severe weather conditions. By being aware of these options, you can make sure your bath will remain sturdy and secure for many years to come, supporting its structure and successfully enduring environmental challenges.

Dependence on building materials

Bath wall enclosures can be constructed from cinder block or brick, among other materials. However, developers typically go with wood. The tree has excellent thermal insulation properties and can tolerate high humidity levels and abrupt temperature swings.

The kind of foundation structure selected depends on the material that will be used to construct the bathhouse’s walls:

  • For example, for structures made of brick, expanded clay concrete, and concrete blocks, it is preferable to install a shallow strip foundation.
  • For saunas made of aerated concrete, foam concrete blocks and cinder blocks, a columnar foundation is most suitable.
  • For private washing structures made of logs in the form of a log house or from a profiled beam, the foundation is erected from logs laid horizontally along the perimeter of the walls, or supported on pillars made of wooden logs. Also, wooden baths are built on screw piles.

Considering the size of the building

There is absolutely no need to design a custom bathhouse project. Almost every bath that is the ideal size has a ton of ready-made design documentation available. The only thing left to do is choose the foundation type and match it to the local soil conditions. The following table presents the findings from multiple analyses of how the size of the bathhouse affects the foundation choice.

Table showing how the size of the bathhouse affects the foundation choice.

Bathhouse size in plan, m Foundation type Recommendations
With your own hands Full construction
2 x 2, 3 x 3, 3 x 4 Tape,
columnar
Tape Shallow
4 x 4, 3 x 5, 3 x 6 Tape, columnar Tape – " –
5 x 5, 6 x 6 Pile-screw Belt, pile-screw It will be more economical to use screw piles

Useful video

You can choose the following foundation for a bath from the video:

Factors to Consider Considerations
Soil Type Check soil stability and drainage capability.
Building Size Match foundation strength to the bath"s size and weight.
Local Climate Account for frost depth and seasonal ground movement.
Budget Balance cost with long-term durability and maintenance.

The stability and longevity of your bath depend greatly on the foundation you choose. When making this choice, there are a number of things to take into account. Examine the soil conditions in the area where you want to build first. The kind of soil—clay, sand, or loam, for example—can have an impact on how well a foundation holds up a building.

Next, think about your bathhouse’s dimensions and mass. Deeper or stronger foundations may be necessary for larger or heavier structures in order to disperse the weight uniformly and avoid settling or shifting over time.

Environmental elements and the climate are also important. It is crucial to select a foundation that reduces the possibility of movement as a result of freezing and thawing cycles in colder climates because frost heaving can be an issue.

Seeking advice from a licensed engineer or builder can yield insightful information specific to your site and needs. In addition to making sure the design complies with regional building codes and regulations, they can evaluate the soil and suggest appropriate foundation types, such as concrete slabs, strip footings, or pier foundations.

In the end, the ideal bathhouse foundation will strike a balance between cost-effectiveness, structural integrity, and site and climate suitability. Long-term stability and strength of your bath will be ensured by devoting sufficient time to research and plan this important aspect of construction.

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Fedor Pavlov

Interior designer, author of books on residential design. I will help you make your home not only functional, but also beautiful.

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