Hunting Cabin Help

[BigWolf]

I was visiting my uncle the other day and we were talking about hunting and then he asked if I wanted to help him build a cabin on the land where we hunt. I was not going to say no but there's so much we don't know. There's quite a few of us who hunt here so we wanted to make a sizable but simple cabin set up.

I live in West Texas we get some snow n ice n rain during the fall and winter seasons.

We were thinking about 32x40 or 32x32 with 8ft being the front porch

16ft 2x8's for the floor joists at 16in on center
6x6 pressure treated posts dug down 2 feet deep filled in with cement(sonotube?)
Planed to use hangers on the joists

I've been wanting to build my own cabin and I like to plan ahead so I've been reading the forums n such for a little while.  I know my rough sketch isnt quite the way it should be. There's not need for permits where the cabin will be built. But I want the thing to last for a long time. My uncle put me in charge of figuring out what needs to be done n how it needs to be built.






Sorry I couldn't get the pictures of my rough sketch any bigger but I think you click on them to see the bigger picture. I'm not a carpenter, Ive never built anything like this before. This is just a rough sketch until I know more about what I need to add in. Any help would be useful.

Thanks

-BigWolf

[Don_P]

I'm not a real fan of pier foundations, that said,  the floor needs to be done a little differently. With this type of construction the load bearing walls of the cabin need to be built over girders, beams that span between piers. They are sized based on the loads from above, the main floor, any floors or attics above, and the roof.

On your plan there would need to be a row of piers with a girder under the porch edge, the front wall, the center of the building and under the rear wall of the cabin. It is better not to try to run joists from the main floor out under the front wall to become porch floor joists, it invites water back inside. Typically it is done with a ledger properly attached to the cabin frame, accounting for the porch load in that front girder and pier footings.

At that point it sounds like the floor joist span is 32'-8'...24', with a girder set at 12' in from the back wall then 2x8's on 16" centers would work for the cabin floor joists. Girder sizes and spans are in table R502.5(1) &(2) in the codebook, it looks like a triple 2x10 girder in the center of the cabin with an 8' pier spacing  would work.

[BigWolf]

I've seen other types of foundations online....Cement footers with cinder block wall with a floor sill on top of the wall then add the joists.

Whats your objections to pier foundations? And what code book are you referring too? Maybe I can find it and go through it thoroughly

[MountainDon]

The codebook Don_P is refering to is the IRC.
IRC online here...
It is used in 49 of the 50 states. States and local jurisdictions do have the option to make changes


Objections to pier foundations include...

... poor lateral stability. Each pier is independent, not tied together in a block as a perimeter foundation and crawlspace. One may lift or sink or tilt/rotate about some horizontal point. For example, when the ground gets saturated from heavy rainfall the soil loses its ability to restrain lateral forces.

... piers do not meet any of the foundation prescriptions in the IRC.