I have a couple questions, I have always bridged up to 6' when stepping footings. But now the homeowner is questioning me and I cant find backup. The biggest issue is where two interior footings, for wood framed bearing walls intersect with my ICF walls that start 40" lower for frost wall. We ended the interior footing about 3' away from the ICF wall. How should the gap be dealt with?

Does that make sense? Three feet away horizontally.

We join all our footings together, in your case I would have come off the frost footing 2 feet and stepped up the height of the block, run 2 feet, step again, run 2 feet, step again as needed.

Does the 2006 IRC address this situation? I have not found it.

Posted By ICFconstruction on 30 May 2013 09:59 PM
I have a couple questions, I have always bridged up to 6' when stepping footings. But now the homeowner is questioning me and I cant find backup. The biggest issue is where two interior footings, for wood framed bearing walls intersect with my ICF walls that start 40" lower for frost wall. We ended the interior footing about 3' away from the ICF wall. How should the gap be dealt with?

As Chris indicates the Canadian codes require continuous footings and not more than 24" difference in elevation change. In your case, you would have to treat the opening as you would a door way in a bearing wall and install a header either at the top or the bottom. That would mean that the end of strip footing would have to perform as a column base. Depending on soil conditions and load being applied, it might have to be wider than the balance of the footing.
I would have stepped the footings as per Chris and than run a tee wall of ICF back the three feet to the height of the interior footing to give the framers something to frame the bearing wall out to meet the exterior wall.