doing foundation in sections

i'm wanting to pour my foundation myself (with the help of a few people) with a portable cement mixer. the thing is, i've heard it's bad if you don't pour it all at once; i don't know why, i just heard that it is. is there anyway to make it work? would it help if there was rebar joining each section? thanks, Reuben

 

Have you by any chance calculated how many bags of mix you would need for what you have planned. When you do I think you'll change your mind as you may be looking into hundreds of bags depending on what sort of foundation you have in mind, i.e. basement/no basement, slab, whatever. Compare that against what it would cost delivered bulk.

 

Tow Guy is correct and it is also not possible to guarantee the compressive strength of the concrete that is mixed on site and by hand.

The ratio of bagged concrete per yard is 54 60lb bags of pre-mix at $3.00 per bag to 1 yard of concrete truck deleivered at about $90 per yard. It will not only cost more for materials to mix it by hand yourself, it will literally kill you mixing and placing the 3240 lbs of raw materials for each yard.

Building codes require poured footers and foundations to meet compressive and lateral strengths set by engineering standards based on soil conditions, depths and building loads. You can largely not produce a uniform mix to meet these requirements when done by hand.

For foundation, concrete forms must be used. Modern codes forbid 'trench footers' anymore...so you'd better be professionally equipped for wall and footer forms...

Placement of reinforcing steel is also set by code for footer and wall size and depth and must be professionally calculated if not installed.

Foundations usually need to be poured as single pours because pouring in stages creates natural weak points where the concrete will crack along poured joints...

My suggestion is to pay to have the job professionally done. It will likely cost less and be surperior to a DIY job on most any day.

luck