High rise buildings are built with steel columns encased in concrete. Such columns carry very heavy load and hence they need special foundations to spread the load to a larger area of soil. Grillage foundation is one such special foundation. It consists of one tier or more tiers of I-sections steel beams. Figure 7.7 shows a typical two tier grillage foundation. Top tier consists of less number but large size steel section while lower tier consists of larger number but smaller size steel sections. Column load is transferred to the top tier through a base plate. The grillage beams are unpainted and are encased in concrete with minimum cover of 100 mm beyond the edges of steel sections. A minimum clear space of 75 mm should be maintained between the flanges of adjacent grillage beams so that concreting can be made properly.
To maintain spacing, pipe separators are used.
