6. Post feet and foundations

The foundation is the final structural element, ensuring that the forces acting on the building are transmitted to the ground itself. They are generally made of reinforced concrete and built by civil engineering companies. Since manufacturing tolerances vary from one material to another (millimetre tolerances for steel, centimetre tolerances for concrete), all necessary systems must be in place to compensate for deviations between theoretical and actual dimensions (wedges, slotted holes, etc.).

The choice of foundation type (insulated footing, threaded footing, invert, pile, etc.) depends on both the intensity of the forces to be transmitted and the soil's ability to resist them. While the transfer of vertical forces generally poses no problem, since the foundation's bearing surface is sized according to the soil's load-bearing capacity, the same cannot be said...