Sea Water Spray

I would say no. But your soil survey will give you other information that will dictate the cover required anyway. Given that it is a raft foundation, the small increase of cover will not affect the amount of concrete used anyway.

I don't know what C45 really means, but I do know that water weighs 8pounds a gallon and is the universal solvent.

Just to be picky, water weighs 10 pounds a gallon in the rest of the world.

Tony

Tony, How much salt did you include? Or do you take Imperial Gallons? Or just wet salt?

Use COMPACTUNA and make your concrete even with seawater. Concrete is a chlorination process, salt is good for the cure and the compactuna does the rest. That is how Holland builds IN the ocean.

Can any one read the standards and codes and provide some serious comments

The standards and codes - if there are any there - should be provided - or a link to it - by the poster - so that those of us who can, can read and understand. Lynlynch is correct.

How does spray gets there in the first place? Height, underground (porosity), distance, wind direction and force? All these factors are to be considered and if the soil is not porous at all (clay types) the "effect of the spray" does not count and the spray itself doesn't reach the foundation if buried. In these modern times, when additives for concrete exist, concrete docks and vessels can be built to function IN, ON and under the ocean. So what more is there to be said? Thanks

It is not the standards and codes that are in question.

Read my previous post.

If the structure is underground, then the soil survey should be advising you on the level of sulphates, chlorides etc in the soil and then you can go to the codes to find out what level of protection you need to provide.

A simple way of achieving this is to specify in your soil investigation that they give you their recommendations. They are the specialists.

If you don't have a soil survey, why don't you have a soil survey?

All that said, if you are 700m from the coast, you are unlikely to have brackish water. Get it confirmed in the soil survey.

I have provided the following to the client and I am still being forced to use C40.

1. Geotech report saying that the salt levels are minimal and the soil is rocky and I will monitor it for every building

2. Concrete cover shall be more than 50mm

3. I will provide a coat of bituminous paint over concrete before backfilling

4. I will keep the w/c ratio at around 0.5

5. Since its Medeterranian, Concrete in foundation is not exposed to any freeze thaw cycles or any deicing chemicals.

Many codes are silent.Only Australian Code AS3600 mentions that seawater effect is only considered for external surfaces above ground and only then is given exposure class B2 for anything within 1km of the coastline. And Neither BS nor ACI mention the status of concrete in foundations accept CAN/CSA 23.1 which is almost similar to ACI in jurisdiction, where it is mentioned that buried concrete in foundations, or columns behind walls, or interior slabs are to be considered as class N, "Not exposed to exterior influences"; if there are no chlorides in soil and also no freeze thaw cycles occur.

Now my question is without getting into a legal battle, can some one go to ACI or BS and ask them to provide a judgement, or clarify on whats missing in thier codes.

There is nothing missing from the BS. You need to go and look at BS8500-1 which is referred to in BS8110. The post just above by Guest explains what to do.

Have a look in Annex A of BS8500-1:2006 and compare what you are looking at. The brackish water is what you may have (although unlikely given the distance from the coast).

As some comfort to you, the previous BS8110 from 1985 had a table 3.4 on cover and specifically mentions the following:

very severe : cover 50mm : 0.55 maximum cement water ratio : lowest grade of concrete C40

So you can still have very severe and 50mm cover. Just need to watch the water/cement ratio. But nowadays, you do have to go through the revised edition of BS8110 and so refer to BS8500.