Long story short--finally found a lot to build our ICF house and our contract, which is up in 3 days,is contingent upon the soil samples. Just received the results today and according to the engineer "there are plastic soils all over the place in the sampling." We have a good contractor who has built a few ICF houses. So my questions are: Go through with the contract while asking for a reduction in price for the amount the contractor and engineer says it will take to safely build on the site OR should we just try to find another lot? Can a ranch style ICF house (9 foot basement, 10 foot ceilings main floor-2300 sq feet) be safely built with minimal settling in this environment if remediated? How expensive is this? Thanks in advance!

There are ways to build on almost anything. The question is at what cost and what it is worth to you and these depend completely on the exact details of your situation.

There are likely to be plastic soils in other lots in your region as well. What is the typical way of dealing with them there? Pilings? Post-tensioning? What part of the world are you in?

Posted By Melsie on 12 Mar 2015 09:08 PM
Long story short--finally found a lot to build our ICF house and our contract, which is up in 3 days,is contingent upon the soil samples. Just received the results today and according to the engineer "there are plastic soils all over the place in the sampling." We have a good contractor who has built a few ICF houses. So my questions are: Go through with the contract while asking for a reduction in price for the amount the contractor and engineer says it will take to safely build on the site OR should we just try to find another lot? Can a ranch style ICF house (9 foot basement, 10 foot ceilings main floor-2300 sq feet) be safely built with minimal settling in this environment if remediated? How expensive is this? Thanks in advance!

How deep were the samples taken?  Will the basement be fully below ground or will it be a walkout basement?  The basic question is where will the footings be built relative to the samples indicating plastic soils?  What about a garage or porches?  Will those be built on footings at grade level?

I agree with Arkie. I found that clay type soils often cover hard pan below. Depends on depth.

Thanks for the replies! Sorry I haven't replied but my computer has been broke. So they drilled to 15 feet on 2 of the samples. 3 samples had auger refusal at 6 feet and 13 and 14 feet. One sample showed light gray clay/shaley clay with weathered rock (damp) at 15 feet. One sample showed gray clay with traces of shale and heavy rock fragments. Our contractor thinks he can do the proper prepping for about $10,000 and the engineer will cost a couple of thousand to be there during the remediation process. We asked for a price reduction of $10,000. What do you think?