Engineering Disclaimer

1. General information only

The soil types guide, the standards and field tips pages, the frequently asked questions and every calculator on this site are published as general educational information for engineers, developers and students. They describe typical behaviour and common practice. They do not describe your site.

2. Ground conditions are site specific

Soil and rock can change completely across a plot boundary, and often change significantly within a single footprint. Bearing capacity, settlement behaviour, groundwater level, chemical aggressiveness and liquefaction risk can only be established by drilling, sampling and testing the ground at your location.

Typical values quoted on this site, such as bearing capacity ranges for gravel or clay, are illustrative. Using them for design would be unsafe.

3. About the calculators

Our free tools apply standard simplified formulae and published correlations. They assume idealised conditions and omit factors that frequently govern a real design, including:

• Settlement, which very often governs before bearing capacity does.
• Groundwater position and its effect on effective stress.
• Seismic loading and liquefaction potential.
• Layered or variable ground rather than uniform strata.
• Adjacent structures, slopes, excavations and existing foundations.
• Long term changes such as seasonal moisture movement in expansive clay.

Treat every output as a rough order of magnitude check, useful for sanity checking a figure or sizing a budget, and nothing more.

4. Standards references

Where we cite ASTM, BS EN, Eurocode 7, AASHTO or the Building Code of Pakistan, we do so in summary and in plain language. Those summaries are not the standards themselves. Always work from the current published standard, and note that standards are revised.

5. Professional reliance

No engineer and client relationship is created by reading this website or using its tools. Professional responsibility arises only under a signed engagement for a specific project, and is expressed in the signed report issued for that project.

6. Imagery

Photographs and illustrations on this site are used to depict the type of work Soil Investigation Services performs. Unless expressly captioned otherwise, they should be taken as representative rather than as records of a particular named project.

7. Accuracy

We take care to keep this content correct and current, but we do not warrant that it is free of error or omission, nor that it reflects the most recent revision of any standard. If you spot something wrong, please tell us.

8. No liability for reliance

To the fullest extent permitted by Pakistani law, Soil Investigation Services accepts no liability for any loss or damage arising from reliance on the general information or calculators published on this website. See our Terms of Service for the full position.