foundation support

[John Dirks Jr]

When talking about foundation support, what do you call the soil under and around the foundation?

Soil, dirt, median, earth....?

[Chad Fabry]

Soil, dirt, median, earth....?

undisturbed.

You could build on the median but the core of the Earth is molten nicklel and iron.

[kurt]

The soil under the footing should be undisturbed. The soil around the foundation is backfill, unless the foundation just grew there like a mushroom.

General descriptive terms are subgrade, soil substrate, below grade, dirt, earth.........

[Steven Hockstein]

I call it soil.

You probably know this but there are soil classifications in the IRC (Table R406.1). The height of the unbalanced fill against the foundation in addition to the type of soil has to be determined when designing the foundation walls.