Wafflemat Foundation System Supports Seven-Story Structure

Wafflemat Foundation Systems were always engineered to be used in structures four stories and less, as anything taller would require a different foundation system because of the loads associated with five stories and above.

That all changed recently when Conco Concrete installed a  Wafflemat Foundation System as the foundation in a seven-story apartment building in San Francisco. A 16″ top slab, the most ever poured for a Wafflemat Foundation, was placed on a 12″ Wafflebox. Then, the building started upwards: two floors of parking (there’s rarely street parking in SF), a podium deck, and five floors of living space. Seven full — and incredibly heavy — floors all supported by Wafflemat Foundation Systems.

Finally, not only did the Wafflemat Foundation System provide the necessary performance, it also provided hundreds of thousands of dollars of cost savings for the developer via reductions of concrete, as the alternative was going to be a 28″ solid mat slab, as well as about 30% less steel, as use of Wafflemat System meant compression of, in this case, a 16″ top slab vs., again, a 28″ solid mat slab.

Since 1993, Wafflemat Foundation Systems have been proven to be the leading foundation in its class. Now, it’s the leading system in multiple classes.