What is a Raft Slab
A raft slab is reinforced concrete slab that is strengthened with integral concrete beams in both directions.
Usually used as the foundation for new houses and extensions, raft slabs in Australia are designed to comply with Australian standard AS2870.
I call the strengthening beams strip footings (because they run in parallel strips). The beams around the outside I call edge beams.
How is a Raft Slab Built
Here’s the process for building a raft slab for a house.
- Set out. Using survey equipment, the outer boundaries of the house are marked out. Smart builders use a surveyor to make sure the house is in the correct location!
- Edge beams. The footings around the outside of the house are dug into the ground. 300mm wide edge beams are common. The depth of the edge beam depends on the reactivity of the soil.
- Steel reinforcement in placed into the edge beams. The steel can’t be close to the ground or it will rust and fail – so concreters use plastic supports called ‘bar chairs’ to held the steel away from the ground.
- The edge beam is filled with concrete up to ground level. Steel bars are placed into the wet concrete at 800mm centres and are left sticking out of the footing to tie the edge beam and the slab concrete together. The exact location of these bars isn’t very important, but their spacing is.
- Once the edge beam concrete has hardened, the concreters will place the sand that goes under the slab to make it the correct height. Sand or crusher dust or decomposed granite are all acceptable in my opinion. The sand has to be compacted so that it is firm and hard because it has to support the wet concrete of the slab before it cures.
- Once the sand is placed everywhere under the slab, the concreters remove the sand from where the strip footings run. If the surface of the slab is high enough, the strip footings will be above the original ground level. Otherwise the concreters have to dig through the sand and remove some of the original ground to get a deep enough strip footing.
- The concreters place a black plastic sheet into the strip footings and over all of the ground under the slab. The edges of the sheets of black plastic have to be lapped and taped because the plastic stops the ground sucking moisture out of the wet concrete before it cures and also helps stop moisture rising out of the ground and through the concrete.
- Then the concreters place steel reinforcement into the strip footings and sheets of slab reinforcement everywhere in the slab. Again the concreters use plastic bar chairs to make sure the reinforcement is not touching the plastic and is not sitting so high it is poking out the top of the slab. The slab reinforcement is very important because it helps control the size of cracks in the surface of the raft slab. See this post on shrinkage cracks.
- Around the outside of the raft slab – above the edge beams – the concreters use formwork or concrete blocks to make the sides of the slab. If the ground is sloping, sometimes the concrete blocks are laid before the sand is placed – but that makes it very difficult to place and compact the sand properly.
- The concreters pour concrete into all of the strip footings and the slab using concrete trucks and concrete pumps. They make the surface smooth and level (called screeding) and then allow the concrete to dry (called curing). If the concrete dries too quickly, the surface can crack – just like mud cracks when the surface dries when it is still wet underneath – so the concreters often use special chemicals call ‘curing compounds’ to make sure the concrete all cures at the same time.
- The concrete reaches its full design strength in less than 28 days (normally about 23 days) but the slab can be walked on and worked on well before that. The formwork is normally removed the day after the concrete is poured.
We Design Raft Slabs
There are lots of rules for working out the depth and spacing of strip footings in a raft slab and it is very important to get them right.
Use an experienced structural engineer to get an accurate and cost effective raft slab designed for your next house. Call us or Get a Quote.
We design raft slabs that comply with building codes. We design raft slabs that are strong enough. We prepare raft slabs drawings that your builder can understand.
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