Concrete Blocks Piers

[daybreakhuntin]

Does anyone know of any threads or have any experience using concrete blocks as piers and then put your floor on top of the piers. Looking for pics.. Any help?

I am wanting to hide the concrete blocks with rock to give it a finshied look. Make sense???

[MountainDon]

Hiding the blocks with rocks okay to me.

I don't recall a specific thread here on building concrete block piers.  Information like this is included in the plans like John's Little House plan set. But the technique would begin with determining how deep your footing need to be and how many footings you need for the soil type. Most footings could be 16 x 16 x 8"thick with an  X  shaped or a  #  shaped set of rebar rods cast in place about mid thickness.

The piers could be built in conventional manner, mortar between each block, or dry stacked. The key would be to make them precisely vertical. In both cases the piers would be filled with poured concrete and a couple of lengths of rebar. These rebar should have the lower end bent and placed in the wet concrete footing, extending up to the uppermost block. An anchor bolt would be placed in the wet concrete fill at the top of each pier.

Beams, sometimes called girders, would be secured to the piers with metal brackets, and the floor joists on top of those, OR wooden posts would extend up from the concrete using metal post bases and support the girders, and the joists.

[Redoverfarm]

Daybreak that is basickly what I did for a porch. I poured 24" square footers and then laid 16" flu blocks filled with concrete.  I then went back and parged the visible sides with mortar and will lay cultured stone on them. Just make sure that you have 8-10" deep footers with the top of the footers below the frost line and in even increments of 8" to your construction or framing grade.  It doesn't matter if for some reason they are not the same depth as long as they are in 8" increments of difference and below the frost line. Occassionally things happend and they are dug a little too deep. Do not try to add soil to make them right just go down the needed difference in solid ground and add another block (never seen under the ground).  Footers on fill dirt will drop later and leave you with a bad settling house.

[Okie_Bob]

Daybreak you might pick up this months copy of 'Fine Homebuilding'. The cover has a pic and there is a good article inside about
fake stone. Done correctly it looks like the real thing. Weighs 1/2 what real stone weighs and is much easier to install. It's becoming more and more available even from Home Depot in a few variations. Much cheaper if you buy direct from a mfgr. Smaller mfgr's are sproting up
all over around here.
Done wrong it is a mess! Just dropped off a guy at a new motel down the street and they have big columns supporting a roof over the entry. As I sat in my truck waiting to pick this guy up the next morning, I couldn't help but see how they had installed the fake stone by taking a circular saw and cutting the end off of the corner rock! Plus the lines of the stone were anything but straight. It looked like crap and that is being very kind! I'll have to go back and take some pics on how not to install it~
Okie Bob

[Redoverfarm]

Daybreak if you want some idea of how the cultured stone will look I started on my chimney .  I also am going to do what you are suggesting as far as the piers which are also show absent the stone. Weather her is too cold to work with it.

http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=3613.0