Foundation Types for Dummies

pier and beam basics

It's a tenet of faith here at the Antisocial Network that you can't go wrong saying, "Ask a stupid question, you'll get a stupid answer." Nowhere on the internet has been better evidence of that axiom's accuracy than the site we like to call the mother lode of misinformation: eHow.com. Now that the site's owners have started parceling our posts to niche sites, the misinformation has been spread around, but it's still just as clueless. Take, for instance Tyler Lacoma, whom we found attempting to address the monumentally stupid question, "Can a Pier & Beam Foundation Be Filled in With Slab?" at GardenGuides.com.

The answer, of course something along the line of, is "You could, but why would you want to?" although Lacoma never actually said so. The closest he got to saying that was (alongside several hundred words of describing slabs and pier-and-beam foundations) was to warble,

"The two types of foundations are separate for good reasons."

Of course, we're disinclined to take Tyler's word for that, given his later claim that,

"A pier and beam foundation is installed in a concrete slab -- it needs the concrete bed for support."

Which, of course, is utter bullshit. Yes, the piers of a pier and beam foundation rest on or consist of concrete footings, but that's not the same thing as a "concrete slab"! But what do you expect of a moron who claims that,

"Pier and beam construction uses wood supports that have inherent flexibility, which means they can shift more easily in response to soil changes and settling houses."

As near as we can tell, that's Lacoma's misinterpretation of a reference that said that pier and beam foundations are "less susceptible (as compared to slab foundations) to damage from the ground shifting" because the piers are discrete locations instead of a continuous slab. That's a far cry from "inherent flexibility" in the piers, dummy.
Tyler finishes by offering the following "advice":

"...[a pier] can certainly be repaired if cracks or flaws occur. It is not the same project as filling in your crawl space entirely, but rather repairing or adding new support to a particular section of your foundation. New mortar and epoxies can be used in these repairs."

Yes, a stupid question... but also a stupid answer. Apparently, our Dumbass of the Day remained convinced that a pier and beam foundation "is installed in a concrete slab." Now do you see why we gave the young business grad his fourth award? Sure, you do...

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