We did some platform foundations along a railroad that required spread footings. The orginal plan was to sheet,excvate, form, pour, strip, backfill and extract or cut the sheets.Footings were 5 foot deep, but the railroad loads on the sheeting, the hard driving and limited overhead due to wires made driving difficult. Also, since railroad traffic had to be maintained, work hours were limited to nights. We precast the same foundation in our yard, modified the reiforcing to accomidate the handling stresses and trucked them to the site.
We then in one evening we excavted the hole, (sheeting was not reqiured as there was no railroad loads and the hole was otherwise suficcently stable, threw a little stone in the bottom to make a level grade, set the unit and backfilled. It worked well and we have used the method since that time. The only problem is that the precast foundations become heavy quickly and size will probly be limited by the equipment that can set it.
![[cheers]](/data/assets/smilies/cheers.gif "[cheers] [cheers]")
