Base plate instead of strip foundation?

Hello! I hope you can help me! We are building a single-family house with garage without a basement with a lot of our own work. There is a geological report of the construction road (about 10m away from our property). It is soft clay soil, so our architect and the structural engineer think that a strip foundation with a slab would not be secure. Instead, we should lay at least 50 cm of crushed stone, compact it with a tamper, and then put a 30 cm slab on top. I don’t feel comfortable with that. What do you think? Can I rely on that? And what about frost skirts? How should I insulate them?

Thank you very much in advance!

Hello Oleg, as a layman you can only rely on what the expert says. You can get a second opinion if you are unsure. Why are you giving up the basement, is it cheaper or what is the reason for that?

I will probably have no choice but to trust the expert. The basement is ruled out for cost reasons and because the groundwater level is very high.

Hello,
the groundwater is also very high here, so we built a waterproof tank. However, we needed the basement because otherwise we would have nowhere to store our things. We also have a sauna, which we would not have been able to accommodate otherwise.

Hi, I’m not very familiar with it either, but the gravel under the house sounds good. The water definitely has to be able to drain well. You can definitely get a second expert, no one will be upset about that.

Hmm... that is a multifaceted question, but I think that in your case a lot depends on the quality of the soil. Actually, only an expert can see through that.