Foundation stone

“ To use a foundation-stone, on its own authority, as a stepping-stone over a gap of 3,200 years, is purely constructive chronology, and as such is to be carefully distinguished from what historians mean by authentic history, as when Herodotus or Thucydides tells us what happened during their own lives or before their own eyes. ”

“ As the foreman sings a droning labour song, the men pull simultaneously at the ropes, and the stone or iron is heaved high in the air and falls into the hole, thus tamping down the earth at the point where the foundation stone is to lie. Crushed stone or broken pieces of tile are thrown in and this is all mashed into the earth to make the foundation still stronger. ”

“ If the foundation is bad, breaking the bottom stone into small pieces is expensive and injurious, upon the principle I have above described, for the same reason that an arch formed of whole bricks, or deep stones, is preferred to one of the same materials broken into smaller pieces, for, in some countries, the materials will admit of the foundation of the road being considered as of the nature of a flat arch, as well as being supported by the strata directly under it. ”

“ There are many varieties of stone conglomerates throughout the country which are valuable for foundation uses. Stone should be laid up in lime mortar in the direction of its natural bed in the quarry, with a sufficiency of bond stone. ”

“ There is not a single straight line to be met with from foundation to roof, all is bending or broken. The form of every stone stone in its walls is a study; for, owing to the infinite delicacy of structure in all minerals, a piece of stone 3 in. in diameter, irregularly fractured, and a little worn by the weather, has precisely the same character of outline which we should find and admire in a mountain of the same material 6,000 ft. ”

“ The rock, which slopes toward the south-west, is cut into horizontal steps, into which are dovetailed, and united by a strong cement, Portland stone and granite. The whole to the hight of thirty-five feet from the foundation, is a solid body of stones, engrafted into each other, and united by every means of additional strength that could be devised. The building has four rooms, one over the other, and at the top a gallery and lantern. The stone floors are flat above, but concave beneath, and are kept from pressing against the sides of the building by a chain let into the walls. ”

“ The foundation (strictly speaking) is made of large blocks, roughly squared, and not rusticated, fastened together by a tenon left projecting from the face of one stone, fitting into a corresponding mortise in the next: there is not a trace of iron or lead or mortar; but where the wall rises above ground its face is vertical, the blocks are more carefully squared, and rustic work is used, with wide and deep grooves ”

“ In such cases, care must be taken to allow in the depth of the excavation for the hight it is intended to raise the earth grades. The appended estimate of cost is for excavating 3 feet deep. This will furnish 202 cubic yards of earth to raise the grades 11⁄2 foot immediately around the house (leaving 2 [162] feet of the foundation exposed to sight) , and give a gentle slope outwards in every direction to the distance of 40 feet. All the outside walls are solid masonry. The foundations are of the roughest stone, laid in good mortar, 2 feet thick. ”

“ A stone foundation is best, but where stone is expensive may be replaced by cedar, hemlock or Osage orange posts, deeply set in the ground. Small houses can be built on runners as described for colony houses for an egg farm. ”

“ For rural dwellings in New England stone is rarely used, except for foundations below ground, being, according to the common notion, better for that purpose than brick, but not as worthy to be seen, unless hammered and chiselled into straight lines and smooth surfaces. Errors both. Well-burned brick laid in cement mortar are nearly always as good as a stone foundation, while nothing can be more effective in appearance than a well-laid wall of native, undressed stone. ”

“ Many small houses in the country are built without any permanent foundation, but are temporarily supported on posts set in the ground, and “boarded down.” They are always shaky, and doubtful while they stand, and are frequently blown over altogether. As will be readily seen, the above method provides for the saving of one-half of the mason-work in the foundation. In many places stone is abundant, and will answer the same purpose as brick in this case, except for the 6 inches above ground. The laying up of a single-face wall, 21⁄2 feet high, of rough stone and mortar, would cost but a trifle. ”

“ The stability of the whole giant structure was dependent upon the perfection and right placing of each individual stone from lowest foundation to the keystones of the vaulting arches of the nave; the harmony of design dependent on rightly maintained proportions of each granite block, large or small—and all this marvellous structure was the product of the rude granite veins in The Gore! That adamantine mixture of gneiss and quartz, prepared in nature's laboratory throughout millions of years, was now furnishing the rock which, beneath human manipulation, was flowering into the great cathedral! ”

“ It is far better that foundations are a little too high than too low, for when too high, the approaches can easily be raised at any time with a few loads of earth; but when too low, there seems to be no cure, except to raise the entire building. The foundation-walls are designed to be constructed of broken stone, laid in coarse mortar, as more particularly described for Design XXI.... ”

“ His third tier, if not his second, will probably appear a sufficiently secure foundation for finer work; for if the earth yield at all, it will probably yield pretty equally under the great mass of masonry now knit together over it. So he will prepare for the wall itself at once by sloping off the next tier of stones to the right diameter, as 56 at d. If there be any joints in this tier within the wall, he may perhaps, for further security, lay a binding stone across them, e, and then begin the work of the wall veil itself, whether in bricks or stones. ”

“ The rivers of India run under ground, unseen, unheard, by the millions who tramp above, but are they therefore lost? Ask the golden harvest waving above them if it feels the water flowing beneath? The superstructure of a lifetime cannot stand upon the foundation of a day.
C. H. Parkhurst says that in manhood, as much as in house-building, the foundation keeps asserting itself all the way from the first floor to the roof. The stones laid in the underpinning may be coarse and inelegant, but, even so, each such stone perpetuates itself in silent echo clear up through to the finial. ”

“ At each of these points a monument should be erected, which should consist of a stone of durable quality, six feet long, and eighteen inches square in cross section. This stone should be imbedded in a well-made foundation of concrete. The concrete foundation to be six feet square and four feet deep, the upper surface being at the surface of the ground. The stone should be placed upright, so as to extend three feet into the concrete, and have three feet above the ground. ”

“ The stone is of a close grain and beautiful colour, and the component parts are put together with a hard cement, and with the smallest possible interstices. At the top of it, on the left side, facing the high road from Vire,--and constructed within the very walls themselves, is a well--which goes from the top apparently to the very bottom of the foundation, quite to the bed of the moat. ”

“ The outer portion of many descriptions of rock consists of blocks or layers of stone partially or entirely separated from the main bed, and these, lying in a loose condition, are deceptive and treacherous as a foundation base. The exposed rock should be carefully examined, and all detached or outlying pieces or layers removed before placing any foundation course. ”

“ Hard core-a mixture of broken stone, clinker, brick rubbish and old building materials-has also been largely used to form a foundation. In the northern towns of England cinders have been employed, and where the traffic is exceptionally heavy a pitched foundation of stones on edge has been laid when the sets were not paved upon an old macadamized surface. The concrete for a foundation to a paved street should be made with the best Portland cement, thoroughly mixed in proper proportions with the sand and gravel or other materials used, water being added as sparingly as possible. ”

“ Either stone dust or clayey sand may be used, but clay if used alone is likely to be sticky when wet and prove to be worse than the condition it was expected to correct. In time, ruts and depressions will appear, either as the gradual effect of wear, which will inevitably effect some portions of the surface more than others, or on account of subsidence of the foundation. Uneven places are repaired by first loosening the stone, then restoring the cross section by adding new material and tamping or rolling it in place. ”

“ The blocks of stone in the lower courses are generally more massive than those higher up; this feature, however, whether considered as occurring here or in the cliff houses of Mesa Verde, as pointed out by Nordenskiöld, seems to me not to indicate different builders, but is due simply to convenience. There appears to be no regularity in the courses of component blocks of stone, and when necessity compelled, as in the courses laid on bowlders, which serve as a foundation, thin wedges of stone, or spalls, were inserted in the crevices. ”

“ To insure that the layer of broken stone can be compacted by rolling, it is first necessary to roll the earth foundation until it becomes hard and unyielding. If soft or yielding places appear during the rolling these should be corrected by tile drains or by removing the earth from the spongy place and back-filling with material that will compact when rolled. ”

“ From this state of the mineral strata, it naturally follows, that those who inhabit the sandstone districts employ that beautiful, easily worked, and, in many instances, highly durable stone, in architecture ”

“ Limestone, granite, and sandstone were used for building at a very remote period in much the same way as wood, large blocks, fresh from the quarry, of all manner of different shapes, being piled up horizontally or stood on edge, no cement being employed, though in certain cases crushed stone was used to fill up the spaces between the blocks. ”

“ The houses are, in general, small, and built of wood; but some of them have foundations of granite, which is the only kind of stone in the country. The total want of limestone, and the scarcity of brick-earth, render it here extremely difficult and expensive to give to buildings any degree of stability. ”

“ In the first place it does not explain why exactly the same types of building (e.g. the dolmen) , showing so many similarities of peculiar detail, occur in countries so far apart; and in the second place, if what was carried by trade was the art of building alone, why should the learners go out of their way to use huge stones when smaller ones would have suited their purpose equally well? That the megalithic builders knew how to employ smaller stones we know from their work ”

“ The use of stone for building might have arisen in many places independently. But megalithic architecture is something [145] much more than this. It is the use of great stones in certain definite and particular ways. We have already examined what may be called the style of megalithic architecture and found that the same features are noticeable in all countries where these buildings occur. In each case we see a type of construction based on the use of large orthostatic slabs, sometimes surmounted by courses of horizontal masonry, with either a roof of horizontal slabs or a corbelled vault. ”

“ The gentleman has compounded a cement or mortar, which, by the mere action of the air, assumes in a week or two the durability and consistence of the hardest marble and the firmest stone, and may be applied to all the purposes to which the strongest grained freestone is usually applied. Bridges, aqueducts, houses, and we suppose pavements and roads, can be as well constructed of this material as of the ordinary matters used in their composition. ”

“ Instead of using sand and gravel, or both, in combination with cement, for floor and roof construction, the preliminary experiments that proved the superior value of broken blue-stone for massive work, led to the adoption of washed, fine screenings from the same material for the floors and roofs, because its greater angularity insured a stronger bond in the work than could be realized by using sand and gravel. ”

“ Those who have seen the modern Arabs in excavation work move huge blocks with wooden levers and palm-leaf rope will realize that for the building of the dolmens little was needed except numbers and time.
The other method of moving the stones is as follows: a gentle slope of hard earth covered with wet clay is built with its higher extremity close beside the block to be moved. As many men as there is room for stand on each side of the block, and with levers resting on beams or stones as fulcra, raise the stone vertically as far as possible. ”

“ Granite is now the most widely used stone for buildings, monuments, and bridges. Limestone is the second most used building stone. It was widely used before Portland cement became available in the early 19th century because of its uniform color and texture and because it could be easily carved. Sandstone from local sources was commonly used in the Northeastern United States, especially before 1900. Nationwide, marble is used much less often than the other stone types, but it has been used for many buildings and monuments of historical significance. ”