How To Determine Water Content Of Soil?

By Author: National Labs
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Once you have decided to build yourself a new home in Sharjah and purchased the land, the first thing you need to do is take soil investigation services. Soil testing must be the primary step in your construction planning, as this will help ensure if the plot you have purchased for construction is suitable or not. Thus, this will help avoid any future dreadful phenomena. So, contact a soil and soil testing laboratory in Sharjah and get the necessary tests done.

The soil test reveals the engineering and physical properties, which helps determine the type of foundation that should be used for construction. Knowing about the soil density, moisture content, permeability, mineral presence, and bearing capacity will offer a clear understanding of the working conditions for earthwork and foundations.

You can no doubt find various construction material testing laboratories in Sharjah, but to ensure you take services of a reputable and reliable laboratory, you need to contact National Lab. They are one of the best soil testing laboratories in Sharjah, who can offer you the fastest test results at a fair price.

Why ...
... is soil testing important before construction?

The first and most essential step of a construction process is the foundation. This means even small damage or mistake can lead to the failure or collapse of the entire building. In simple words, the foundation is the guardian of the building that protects it’s from any physical forces emerging in the subsoil. Also, it helps maintain and sustain the load from the building to the ground.

Thus, the soil must contain all the essential chemical and physical properties to withstand the weight of the building properly. To know about the composition, it is essential to contact a soil testing laboratory in Sharjah as it will help determine the bearing capacity and rate of settlement of the soil. Also, this test helps define the depth and length of the pillars required for the foundation.

Soil investigation services further help know about the soil’s water content, which helps to settle the level of humidity within the foundation. It is essential to have a clear idea about the soil’s movement or the way soil will react in the absence or presence of water. Typically, the movement of soil is more in clay soil when compared to sandy soil.

Further removal of vegetation, roots of old cut trees, and weed presence greatly impact the soil movement. Thus, all these factors can affect the foundation settlement, which can pose a threat to the building. Therefore, it is essential that you contact a soil testing laboratory in Sharjah before beginning the construction process.

How is soil testing performed?

When you contact a soil and building materials testing lab, the geotechnical engineers will arrive on the property with the required equipment to boreholes in the soil and take samples.

Generally, the engineers dig shallow holes with hand tools and collect the samples into collection jars. While in some cases, the engineers might need to boreholes that can be between 7 to 10 feet below the surface. This is done to test the water table and find any potential presence of harder soil or bedrocks.

The engineer then takes 4-8 soil samples. But it varies based on the requirements and laboratory you have contacted. But you must know the results with more samples will be accurate.

Types of soil testing

When soil is not tested properly, it can develop problems in the future and lead to the building’s collapse. Therefore, there are various types of soil testing executed to get an idea of the soil’s characteristics. Here are some of them.

soil investigation services
• Moisture content test

This soil testing in Sharjah is performed to know about the water and moisture content of the soil. For the testing, various methods like the over-drying method, calcium carbide method, radiation method, sand bath method, and alcohol methods are used. However, of all the methods, the over-drying method offers the most accurate results. In the results, the water content is generally defined as the mass of water that can easily be removed from the soil by heating it at 105- 110 degrees celsius.

The water table can only be known from soil investigation services, which helps find the humidity level in the foundation.

• Specific gravity test

This test is performed to get information about the saturation degree of the soil and void ratio. The void ratio is a ratio between void volume to the solid volume present in the soil.

An ideal specific gravity for construction should be between 2.65 to 2.85. Further, the soil must consist of a low-value presence of porous matter, organic content, and heavy materials.

• Dry dentist test

The density test is performed for soil classification- loose, medium, and dense. The lower the soil density will be, the solid will be the foundation. The testing is generally done using the sand replacement method, water displacement method, and core cutter method.

• Atterberg limits test

This soil testingis performed to measure the critical water content of the soil. There are the liquid limit, plastic limit, and shrinkage limit, which depicts the fine-grained soil attributes at different conditions.

• Compaction test

The most widely used compaction test is Proctor’s test, which helps determine soil compaction characteristics while reducing air voids with densification. The test offers accurate information about maximum dry density and optimum water content of compacted soil.

National Lab GmbH, headquartered in Mölln in Schleswig-Holstein, has been an independent, purely German company since it was founded in 1918. Due to the strong international orientation and the high level of recognition in scientific laboratories around the world, the English pronunciation of the company name has become common.