FOUNDATION (Lat. fundatio, from fundare, to found), the act of building, constituting or instituting on a permanent basis; especially the establishing of any institution by endowing or providing it with funds for its continual maintenance. The word is thus applied also to the institutions so established, such as a college, monastery or hospital; and the terms “on the foundation,” or “foundationer,” are used of members of such a college or society who enjoy, as fellows, scholars, &c., the benefits of the endowment. Formerly “foundation” also meant the charter or incorporation of any such institution or society, and it is still applied to the funds used for the endowment of such institutions.
The terms “old foundation” and “new foundation” used in connexion with the organizing of English cathedral chapters have no reference to the age of the cathedrals. At the time of the Reformation under Henry VIII. the old college chapters were left unchanged, and are referred to as the “old foundations,” but the monastic chapters were all suppressed, consequently new chapters had to be formed for their cathedrals and these constitute the “new foundations.”
“Foundation” also means the base (natural or artificial) on which any erection is built up; generally made below the level of the ground (see Foundations below). A foundation-stone is one of the stones at the base of a building, generally a corner-stone, frequently laid with a public ceremony to celebrate the commencement of the building. The term is also applied to the ground-work of any structure, such as, in dress-making, the underskirt over which the real skirt is hung, any material used for stiffening purposes, as “foundation muslin or net.” In knitting or crochet the first stitches onto which all the rest are worked are called the “foundation chain.” In gem-cutting the “foundation-square” is the first of eight squares round the edges of a brilliant made in bevel planes and from which the angles are all removed to form three-corner facets.
FOUNDATIONS, in building. The object of foundations is to distribute the weight of a structure equally over the ground. In the construction of a building the weights are concentrated at given points on piers, columns, &c., and these foundations require to be spread so as to reduce the weight to an average. In the preparation of a foundation care must be taken to prevent the lateral escape of the soil or the movement of a bed upon sloping ground, and it is also necessary to provide against any damage by the action of the atmosphere. The soils met with in ordinary practice, such as rock, gravel, chalk, clay and sand, vary as to their capabilities of bearing weight. There is no provision in any English building acts as to the load that may be placed on any of these soils, but under the New York Building Code it is provided that, where no test of the sustaining power of the soil is made, different soils, excluding mud, at the bottom of the footings shall be deemed to safely sustain the following loads to the superficial foot:
| per sq. ft. | |
| Soft clay | 1 ton. |
| Ordinary soft clay and sand, together in layers, wet and springy | 2 tons. |
| Loam, clay or fine sand, firm and dry | 3 tons. |
| Very firm coarse sand, stiff gravel or hard clay | 4 tons. |
A comparison of the pressure exerted on an ordinary foundation by the walls of the several thicknesses and heights provided for by the London Building Act of 1894, and a comparison of a few of the principal authorities, will be Load on foundation. found useful in helping us to arrive at a decision as to what can safely be allowed. Take as an example a wall of the warehouse class, 70 ft. high, whose section at the base for a height of 27 ft. is 2½ bricks thick (or 22½ in.), and for the same distance in height again is 2 bricks thick (or 18 in.), the remainder to the top being 1½ bricks thick (or 14 in.). The weight of brickwork per foot run of such a wall is 4.05 tons on any area of 3.75 ft. super. of brickwork. According to the act the concrete is to project 4 in. on each side; we have then an additional area of .66 ft. super. to add, thus making the total foundation area of each foot run of wall 4.41 ft. super. to take a weight of 4.05 tons or nearly a ton per foot super. (viz. .9 ton.)
Another factor must, however, be taken into consideration, viz. the weight distributed from the loaded floor and from the roof. In this case there would be at least six floors, and the entire weight could hardly be taken at less than 6 tons, which would give a total weight of 10.05 tons on an area of 4.41 ft. super. or a load of 2.28 tons per foot super. This is on the assumption that no extra weight has been thrown on the foundations by openings or piers, or by girders, &c., in which case, in addition to the work being executed in cement, the foundations should be increased in area. Piers always involve a great increase of weight on the foundations, and in very many instances this increased weight, instead of being provided for by increasing the area of the foundations and so reducing the weight per foot super., is only partly met by the improper method of merely increasing the depth of the concrete, while keeping the same projection of concrete round the footings as for the walls. As an example take an iron column to carry a safe load of 80 tons, standing on a York stone template, and in turn supported by a brick pier 22½ in. square. In this case we should have, after allowing for the projection of concrete on either side, an area of 4 ft. 5 in. square, or 19.6 ft. super., and this would give a pressure of 4.1 tons per foot on the foundations, or almost twice as much as in the previous example of a warehouse wall. Here, instead of increasing the depth of the concrete, it would be necessary to increase its width; if it were made 6 ft. square, we should have an area of 36 ft. super. to take the 80 tons, and thus the pressure would only be 2.2 tons per foot, and the cost of the foundation be much the same.