Concrete Foundation Construction in Irving, TX

Blackland Prairie clay in Irving expands and contracts with seasonal moisture changes, producing 3 to 5 inches of vertical movement in the active moisture zone — typically the top 5 to 8 feet of soil. Spread footings located within this zone will move with the clay, causing differential settlement and structural damage to the building above. Drilled piers extend below the active moisture zone to stable bearing capacity in the Eagle Ford Shale or Austin Chalk beneath the clay, where soil movement does not occur. The building structure then spans from pier cap to pier cap, decoupled from the clay movement.

Yes. The geotechnical engineer's field representative must be present during drilled pier installation to log the soil profile encountered in each pier hole and confirm when the pier has reached the specified bearing stratum. The specified bearing stratum may be encountered at a different depth than predicted by the geotechnical report if subsurface conditions vary across the site. Without field observation, the only alternative is to drill every pier to the maximum specified depth — which may be unnecessary on some piers and insufficient on others if conditions vary.

A post-tensioned slab is a concrete slab that contains high-strength steel tendons installed before the concrete is placed. After the concrete cures, the tendons are stressed using hydraulic jacks, placing the concrete slab in compression. Compressed concrete resists cracking better than unreinforced or conventionally reinforced concrete, making post-tensioned slabs the preferred design for commercial and industrial buildings on Irving's expansive clay because the compressive pre-stress helps the slab resist the tensile forces that clay movement imposes on a floating slab.

Post-tension tendons cannot be stressed until the concrete reaches the compressive strength specified by the structural engineer — typically 2,000 to 2,500 psi, which occurs at 3 to 7 days after placement depending on the ambient temperature and the mix design. Until the tendons are stressed, the slab is not in its final structural condition and cannot safely carry construction loads from steel erection or tilt-wall panel craning. We build the stressing milestone into the master schedule as a hard predecessor activity for structural steel or tilt-wall erection.

Yes. City of Irving allows a separate foundation permit to be issued based on the structural foundation drawings before the full building permit is ready. The foundation permit allows drilled pier installation, grade beam construction, and slab-on-grade work to begin while the full building permit review is still underway — which is a common schedule strategy for larger commercial and industrial projects where the structural foundation design is complete before the architectural interior drawings. We use foundation permits on most of our Las Colinas and Irving industrial projects to compress the overall schedule.

General Contractors of Irving builds concrete foundations throughout Irving, Las Colinas, Grand Prairie, Coppell, Carrollton, and Farmers Branch. Our foundation work spans tilt-wall industrial facilities in the Grand Prairie border area, office building foundations in Las Colinas, retail pad sites along Beltline Road and MacArthur Boulevard, and metal building foundations throughout the I-635 industrial corridor.