# Argentinian BBQ



## cleveman (Dec 17, 2011)

Congratulations on the Argentine wife. I have her pictured as a tall woman with dark features and beautiful eyes.

Now to business! I think you'll want footings down past the frost line. You mentioned that your 8" deep concrete will be on gravel. I suppose it is possible to excavate to the frost line, then fill up with compacted gravel, then your 8" of concrete, if this is acceptable in your area.

Otherwise, it is is customary to have a concrete footing down below the frostline, and bring it up with concrete block, concrete, brick, etc.

You are building quite a deal here, and we don't want it moving around from year to year.


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## FUNCTOR (Mar 28, 2012)

I think the frost line around here is 5 - 6 feet. That's a lot of excavating and gravel! so once I dig down that far and fill it with gravel, how do I best compact the gravel so it doesn't shift with the weight above it?


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## cleveman (Dec 17, 2011)

I don't know that it is acceptable to fill with gravel.

I would suggest one of the following:

1. trench 6" wide down to your frost depth around the perimeter of your set-up, lets say it's 8x10'. Fill this trench up with concrete, dropping in 3 horizontal rows of rebar as you come up. One near the bottom on top of some concrete, one near the middle, and one near the top. Put some vertical rebar in every 4 feet or so. Bring this up to ground level and have your rebar sticking up in the air a few feet.

Now form up for your slab, and have 4" of compacted gravel in the middle. Bend the rebar down into the middle and pour your slab.

You can also do this all at once, that is pour the footings and slab at the same time, but it will be tricky with such a small area. Ideally you want to pour concrete right behind the trencher, because the trench may not stay open very long.

If you don't like this approach, you can back-hoe down, then pour a 8" thick by 16" wide footing at the bottom, with no forms. Put in two horizontal re-rods and your verticals down in the concrete every 4 feet or so, sticking up 2'. Now get down in the trench and lay concrete block up to the grade. Fill the cores which have the re-rod in them, and put another piece of re-rod in to tie to the ones coming out of the footing.

Then pour your slab on top of this.

You may also just trench down below where your walls will be, like an E or an H, whatever, and don't worry about your slab moving around. Maybe you don't even need a slab.

Variations on this would be to fill the trench with rubble or rock, and compact as well as possible. Maybe you've seen some structures with rubble foundations. Before concrete, people would just dig down as far as they could, then stack rocks up a few feet above grade, put a big timber on this wall, and build the structure on the timber. Later the timber became a sill plate and the rock became concrete and the we all started paying taxes.


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