A crawler-mounted drill rig with a split-spoon sampler has just finished the last borehole on a tight East Vancouver lot. The soil log shows dense till at three meters. That is the starting point for every shallow foundation design we handle here. Vancouver sits on complex glacial and post-glacial deposits—Seymour Creek till, Capilano sediments, and pockets of soft organic silt near False Creek. Getting the bearing stratum right matters. We interpret the field data, run consolidation and shear strength tests in our lab, and size footings that stay within allowable settlement limits. For sites where the till is deeper than expected, we often combine the shallow design with a targeted CPT test program to map the stratigraphy continuously before finalizing the footing dimensions.
A shallow foundation in Vancouver is only as reliable as the seismic settlement analysis behind it—glacial till is competent, but the silt lenses demand a closer look.
