Joined
·
5,832 Posts
The figure of 2000 psf is known as the presumptive capacity of the soil. This is a figure pulled from a table based on reasonable assumptions about the local soil conditions. The true soil capacity is likely much higher, but in order to demonstrate that to the building inspector, you would need to hire an engineer and run some soil tests. So it is much less costly to somewhat overbuild the footings, and avoid the need to run any tests, and hire an engineer.
