Soil Testing Melbourne | Independent Soil Testing Companies in Melbourne - Owner Builder Club

Soil Testing in Melbourne

Soil testing in Melbourne is a necessary first step in home or commercial construction planning. Through soil testing, you can ascertain whether the soil in your building site is suitable for your home building project.

During soil testing in Melbourne, the types of soils onsite are identified and classified according to their density, strength, contamination and compaction. Without proper soil testing, your house may end up damaged after some time or become structurally unsound due to changes or movements in the soil.

This is a necessary procedure that needs to be followed to prevent you from wasting your resources on a house that’s designed to fail if the site turns out to be unsuitable or unstable. If there are problems with the soil, there are certain structural design approaches that can help you address such concerns.

Service Information

When conducting a soil test, the following activities are generally implemented in accordance with Australian Standard AS 2870/2011-Residential slabs and footings:

  • Site classification
  • Providing Ys values
  • Recommendation of footing depths
  • Recommending the allowable bearing pressures
  • Determination of shear strength
  • Compressive strength testing

When you get experts to do soil testing in Melbourne, you can expect the above services to be done.

FAQs

1. What are the different site classifications?
  • Class A: Stable and non-reactive, with little or no ground movement due to moisture changes.
  • Class S: Slightly reactive, with slight ground movements due to moisture changes.
  • Class M: Moderate ground movements due to soil conditions and moisture changes.
  • Class H1/H2: High to very high levels of ground movements due to soil conditions and moisture changes.
  • Class P: Sites where the soil has a very poor ability to bear loads evenly.
2. Would a site classification make a project more expensive? Depending on the findings, you may need to allocate additional resources if the site classification yields data on very reactive or problem sites (e.g. Class H1, H2, E or P). This would require a special assessment to be done by a structural engineer during soil testing in Melbourne (or elsewhere). It would also require more materials and labour to have a house safely built in the area.