House raising
House raising (house lifting, house jacking, barn jacking, building jacking) is the process of separating a building from its foundation and temporarily raising it with hydraulic screw jacks. The process is the first step in structure relocation in which the building is moved to a different location. House raising may also be a part of a renovation to build a foundation under an existing house or make a house larger by building a new floor level creating a two story house. Often employed in areas that are prone to flooding and storm damage, this process can be achieved through the use of either timber piles or helical piles. Once a house is raised and supported on cribbing, a new foundation can be constructed beneath it. After Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy large numbers of houses in parts of Louisiana, New York and New Jersey were raised to avoid future flooding.
Glaspaleis
Peter Schunck compared the structure of the building with a ship, floating on uncertain ground. The foundation is basically a concrete trough, that can 'give a little' if any mining shafts were to be dug under it. This 'ship' would then never be able to capsize. During construction, the moat of the old Roman settlement Coriovallum was uncovered, which was the reason to lay the foundation deeper than originally planned. Inside the old walls the subsoil was firm, but outside them it was very bad. Building such a structure on such ground in a mining area was deemed too risky and the ground was cleared until a single layer of equal overall weakness was encountered, a 12 m thick sand layer. This sand is generally considered a bad foundation soil, but in a mining area it is a good choice because it flows and 'gives' evenly in case of a cave-in in a mine below it. Still, Peutz decided that the soil pressure should not exceed 1 kgf/cm² (100 kPa). So for the foundation he used a reinforced concrete slab extending under the whole building. This 50 cm thick beamless foundation slab is mushroom-shaped.