Solid from the ground up: Stable and durable foundations for your Muskoka property

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MUSKOKA LIFE — You’ve finally found the perfect lakeside lot and the design plans for your family's dream retreat are final. It's time to start building. However, the first step is to ensure your cottage will have a solid foundation that keeps out moisture, is insulated against cold and heat, withstands seasonal temperature changes and will last for the life of the house. For the best results, you’ll need Muskoka's specialty contractors.

A specialty contractor expertly performs one specific trade. Specialists in rock excavation, helical pile underpinning and insulated concrete form (ICF) wall construction help create foundations that will give safe, stable support to your cottage.

"On the big lakes in Muskoka, the flat properties are gone," says Ron Brent of Brent Quarries in Port Carling. "Many people who buy a lot now and want to build a cottage will be looking at rock excavation to make a level foundation for construction."

During its 27 years of operation, Brent Quarries has offered blasting services that allow cottage construction on rocky, sloping and steep properties. Most of the company's projects are located on Lakes Joseph, Rosseau and Muskoka, where Brent has noted a trend for more landscaping and hardscaping around summer homes.

"The cottages tend to look more formal than the family cottages you saw 40 years ago," said Brent. Aggregates such as gravel, stone, topsoil and mulches for landscaping and hardscaping are made by Brent Quarries and can be delivered to the construction site.

Blasting services are also to carve out parking bays, tennis court construction, and creating decorative waterfalls at cottages. Mark Washington, Landscape Manager at Fowler Construction, knows most Muskoka properties are hilly and rock is seldom far from the surface.

"For tennis courts, we can sometimes build over rock but oftentimes hillside rock needs to be blasted," Washington explains. "We take the blast rock and use it to build up the low side. Though tennis courts appear to be flat, there is a one per cent fall from one end to the other for drainage. Some techniques split the court drainage from left to right, but we tend to split from end to end because we feel it makes a better playing surface. In our construction industry, water is king. We have to move it to where we want it to go or it can destroy everything. In my work with landscaping and patios, there is always a need to put in a slope."

To create cottage waterfalls, Fowler Construction stacks flat dimensional rock, which is square or rectangular, and tops it off with cap rock for a natural look.

"Cap rock is rock that has been on the surface for eons and has been weathered by water running over it," Washington says. "It tends to look softer, rounder and more natural. You can also make a great waterfall with a lean, contemporary look by only using dimensional rock."

When rock excavation is necessary but safety concerns eliminate blasting, standard blasting holes are drilled and filled with an expandable liquid product. Within 24 hours, the product expands enough to crack rock into pieces that can then be taken away.

"I use this method more than all the others," says Washington. "Last year, we were trying to make a pathway to a bunkie. There was a knob of rock 12 feet long, four feet wide and two feet higher than we wanted it to be. This technique solved our problem without blasting. If rock is in the way of our clients’ plan, we can get rid of the rock."

A before and after view of a Fowler Construction waterfront landscaping project.(Photos courtesy Fowler Construction)

While not as widely known as other deep foundation systems, helical piles are gaining in popularity over other standard construction footings for its ease of installation.

"There's no digging, no heavy equipment needed and no concrete necessary," explains Rob Jackson, Regional Dealer of Postech Muskoka in Gravenhurst. "The helical piles’ bearing capacity is guaranteed and they are also guaranteed not to heave with the frost. In the last seven years, we have put in almost 10,000 piles in Muskoka and done a fair amount of bedrock pinning. The typical piece of equipment we use is a two-tonne mini excavator. It's 3,800 lbs., so it almost fits in your pocket. We only need 40 inches of width in a workspace. There are a lot of advantages."

Helical piles seem like a new product, but they actually were invented in the 1840s to anchor lighthouses into the sandy soil along the coast of England.

The helical pile product is a steel shaft with a single flute blade at the bottom. It acts like a screwdriver to go down through the soil. The necessary depth is dictated by soil conditions. Jackson starts with seven-foot piles and adds extensions as needed. A torque gauge tells him how much bearing capacity is available. Postech's projects are mainly cottage and residence foundations. Jackson currently has four crews working in Muskoka and plans to expand into Simcoe County due to the growing interest in helical piles for foundations and other residential construction.

"Builders also use helical piles for decks and docks," says Jackson. "Many don't know the product is applicable to larger projects, to anything you need to hold up or pin down. Every year, I work on twice as many boathouses as the year before. I did one this year in an area where a driven pile goes down between 85 and 110 feet. Our deepest helical pile was 40 feet. We have a bearing capacity that can be measured and we stop when we get to it. We saved that customer about $50,000."

Building cottage foundations from insulated concrete form or ICF instead of standard poured concrete walls is becoming something of a standard for construction in Muskoka. ICF is made of interlocked foam insulation that acts as forms for the concrete and becomes a permanent part of the wall. The forms are commonly made of expanded polystyrene (EPS) and reinforced with steel rebar. After the concrete has set, the interior and exterior walls can be finished.

An Insulated Concrete Form pour

Rick Hallam, who has worked with ICF for 22 years with Tobin Building Systems and currently is ICF Sales & Support Specialist at Washago Timber Mart, says the popularity of ICF grew after a change to the Ontario Building Code (OBC).

"Due to the OBC changes to make homes more energy efficient, ICF has become a preferred way of building, especially for foundations," says Hallam, who recently spoke about ICF at the Ontario Building Officials Association for Muskoka, Parry Sound and Haliburton to introduce it to people coming into the industry. "Cottages and residences have to be insulated to a certain standard. If you do typical construction, it takes several steps to get walls to that stage. With ICF, once you have finished building the wall it meets the standards of the building code as it stands."

ICF walls have a higher R-value than standard concrete walls and its foam insulation dampens outside sounds to create quiet interiors. With no standard seams or joints, ICF has a reduced level of air leakage and superior frame strength. The system was used from foundation to roof to build the Legends at the Falls and Drumkerry By the Falls condominium buildings in Bracebridge and the Brock and Willa Wellness Centre in Port Carling, among others.

"The biggest benefit of ICF is its energy efficiency," says Hallam. "People whose homes have been built to the roof with ICF always tell me they are really pleased with their house."

Hallam also recommends ICF as a way to reduce heating and cooling costs.

"In typical construction, a wall varies in temperature but an ICF wall does not," Hallam explains.

"If the temperature outside is -20 C, the wall itself will be 4 C or 5 C. When it's 40 C outside, the wall will be about 10 C. The inside of a poured concrete wall will be below freezing when it is -20 C outside and about 30 C when the temperature outdoors is 40 C."

Budgeting for an ICF foundation or walls has become easier over the last 20 years. That's good news for the increasing number of cottagers who want to use their retreats throughout the year and need reliable insulation.

"When compared to the cost of building and insulating a standard concrete wall, there is not much difference between it and the cost of installing ICF," says Hallam. "ICF is still a premium product compared to building an uninsulated wall, but since you can't build a year-round residence or cottage without insulation, the comparison is not valid."

... From the pages of Muskoka Life magazine

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