What is a frost wall

A frost wall is a structure that rises above the frost line and serves as insulation for the ground around a building’s foundation.

In freezing climates, frost walls or frost-protected walls are constructed to keep the ground under buildings from freezing and protect their foundations.

In this article you’ll learn:

So, if you’re ready to go with it, this article is for you.

Let’s dive right in.

What is Frost Wall?

A frost wall is a protected wall constructed around the foundation’s edge built underground, below the frost line.

 Since the frost wall is buried under the soil, the frost heave process won’t use any upward pressure on the foundation.

In the interior of a building structure, walls that are constructed above ground level can also be referred to as frost walls.

As a result, this will serve as insulation and keep the building’s interior warm.

Additionally, these frost walls retain heat from the building, avoiding soil freezing and other issues.

Purpose of Frost Wall:

• A frost-protected wall’s main function is to prevent the surrounding soil from freezing during extremely cold weather.
• Ice melts into the water at any temperature decrease, hence freezing and thawing process is necessary.
• These ice lenses will exert significant pressure on the nearby soil mixture.

Types of Frost Walls:

Depending on the requirements of the load, temperature, and building features, various frost walls can be constructed as follows:

1. Frost Wall with Load Bearing:

The foundation will now be responsible for the frost wall due to its construction.

By being built beneath a substantial layer of soil, this wall will serve as a foundation wall.

This will be obviously built below the local frost line.

Extreme weather conditions are used to construct these frost walls (freezing temperatures).

2. Frost walls with Non-load Bearing:

These walls are built like an insulating wall.

There is no insulation in these built-in homes, these insulated non-load-bearing walls will be constructed inside the structure.

Non-load-bearing frost walls help to stop heat loss through the foundation, it is prohibited for the interior frost wall to touch the exterior wall.

While building the same, extra care should be taken.

A gap has been left between the two walls in order to prevent moisture from turning into ice inside the wall structure, it is also advised to have a barrier.

Requirements for Constructing the Frost Walls:

If all the structural components with this construction possess the necessary qualities, the construction of the frost wall performs better.

Some of the fundamental behaviors related to its requirements include the following:

• To avoid any gaps, the basement wall that was built under the wall needs to be patched.
• These basement walls are typically built using cinder blocks, the gaps can be filled with brick fillers.
• If the basement walls are made of concrete, it is necessary to use a paint sealer to fill in any cracks.
• There are specialized paints in the market that can aid in preventing moisture from entering the basement.
• All structural elements must be built with the main objective of preventing moisture invasion.

Footers And Frost Walls For A 40 x40 Shop

Advantages of Frost Wall:

• The building’s foundation allows heat to escape, preventing the ground below from freezing and heaving.
• An FPSF installation enables soil beneath the foundation to stay above freezing even during extremely cold winters when used in conjunction with geothermal heat storage.

Disadvantages of Frost Wall:

• In colder climates, frost damage to building structures is a serious problem.
• The construction is only influenced by the temperature properties of the building materials used.

Applications of Frost Walls:

1. Frost Wall for Shallow Foundation Protection:

Non-bearing frost walls are built with the purpose of defending a shallow foundation.

This type is used when building a frost wall as a deep foundation is either totally unfeasible for the area or doesn’t offer any kind of economic benefit.

Here, this wall is constructed by leaving a particular space between the foundation and wall as per the builder’s advice.

This is set up to prevent the soil from losing heat from it.

In order to effectively warm up the heat radiated from the building; such construction are built around the foundation.

On the both foundation’s exterior (vertically) and basement (horizontally), a rigid foam of insulation is built.

Since of the way these insulations are built, heat generated inside the building’s interior is transferred to the ground, keeping the soil from freezing.

2. Frost Wall for Non-Heated Buildings:

This wall will only warm the building if the structure being built is a heated structure, an non-heated building cannot be used.

A solution for this problem would be to design a horizontal layer that would be positioned beneath the building’s entire foundation.

This horizontal layer must also go beyond the boundaries of the building, vertical insulation of any kind is not offered.

Over the layer of gravel, the provided insulation is placed.

The warmth will be retained in the soil as a result, preventing it from freezing.

Conclusion:

These frost walls regularly absorb heat from their structure to keep the building’s underlying soil from freezing and other related conditions.

In the interior of a building system, walls are constructed above ground is referred as frost walls.

As a result, this will act as insulation to maintain the home’s interior temperature.

Building houses and structures in extreme climates is always a challenge, the temperature depending characteristics of building materials is the sole reason for such a trial. Concrete pouring in hot expands too much and in cold climate contracts too much thereby producing such internal stresses that if not properly taken under-consideration would produce extreme internal strains that might be havoc for the structural integrity and serviceability of the structure. 

What is Frost Wall? Purpose & Types

In this post today we will talk about the condition of the soil in freezing weathers and its adverse effect in the form of frost heave and its solution in the form of frost wall. 

From soil mechanics, it is a well known fact that the matrix of soil particles has voids and gaps that are partially filled by air and water for non-saturated soils. For dry soil (oven dry) the voids are only filled with air while for saturated soils the voids are completely filled by water. Mostly the soil underneath the foundation of the building is soil with partially filled voids by water. This water, during extreme cold climates when the outside temperature falls, freezes and thus producing frost heave. 

Frost heave expands as the ice in the soil accumulates in a structure called ice lens and as we know by the behavior of water; the volume of water increases as it is converted to ice. Thereby, due to conversion and growth of water to ice lens in the soil voids, they push the nearby surrounding soil. The structures having foundation resting on such soils will be shoved upward and thus damaged by the action of ice. The stress reversal occurs after suitable increase in climate and thus thawing might occur relieving the upward shoving of the structure.  

The only remedy for this problem exists in preventing the freezing and heaving of the underneath soil of the foundation. The reason we don’t want the ground to freeze is that frozen ground moves and thus moving the concrete walls up and down. 

Frost walls are actually insulating walls that are constructed / placed deep in the ground around the periphery of the foundations beneath the frost line; so that in the cold winters when the ground freezes the walls and the footings are sitting on will not end up with the ground freezing underneath them. 

Sometimes the term frost wall is also referred to the walls placed above ground inside the house for insulation. And sometimes it is also referred to an insulating layer / frost protection of soil placed between house foundation and a wall constructed sufficiently gapped. This type of frost wall only worked for heated structures. This type of frost wall holds heat from the structure in the ground to prevent freezing in areas where ground frost is common.

The frost wall may be load bearing or non-load bearing; in case of load bearing wall the frost wall itself is a foundation wall that takes the foundation deep enough which is below the frost line of that area. In case of non-load-bearing wall it is just an insulating barrio as explained above. The basements in many older homes are not insulated and, therefore, require a frost wall built just inside the basement’s exterior walls to reduce heat loss through the foundation. The interior wall should not touch the exterior wall, and should include a moisture barrier to prevent moist interior air from forming ice inside the wall.

Before the frost wall is fully functional, in case of a basement beneath the building, some preparatory works needs to be done for an effective heat-loss-control phenomenon. For example, basement walls that are made from cinder blocks require the homeowner to patch any open gaps in the mortar with brick filler. Basement walls that are made from poured concrete require the homeowner to patch any cracks with concrete sealer. Once the concrete sealer is applied, the next step is to apply a paint sealer, specialty paint that helps prevent moisture from entering the basement. This is extremely important because the formation of moisture between the frost wall and the basement wall promotes mold growth.

This type of frost wall is non-load-bearing wall and is meant to protect a building with shallow foundation when deep foundation is not-economical or not-feasible. The wall constructed after leaving a sufficient gap with the building foundation would prevent the soil from losing heat. In such a type of frost wall, the soil surround a building’s foundation would warm up by the heat that is radiated from the building.

	Protecting Shallow Foundation with Frost-Protection Insulating

A layer of rigid foam insulation is applied vertically to the outside of the foundation wall, and another layer of rigid insulation is placed horizontally under the soil at the base of the foundation wall. These layers of insulation direct the warmth from the heated interior of the building downward into the soil and keep it there so that the soil does not freeze.

Frost wall of type 1 explained above is only applied for a heated building as in such a frost-protected wall the warmth radiated by building is the only source of heat. But for unheated buildings such a type of frost wall will not work.

	Frost-protection wall for non-heated Buildings

An alternative design would be to use the heat of the temperature of deeper layers of earth which is always around 40 to 50 degrees throughout the year. In this design, a horizontal layer of insulation is laid under the building\’s entire foundation and extends outward from the foundation, but there is no vertical insulation. 

The layer of insulation rests on a layer of gravel. The warmth of the soil is stored and radiated upward, preventing the upper layers of soil from freezing.

Although for the cost, it depends on the design, but usually it is not an expensive structure and keeping the long-term benefits in view the economy is not the decisive factor whether to build it or not. Usually they are a 4 ft high concrete wall sitting on a footing. Usually they do not require water proofing or structural steel, this is because they are back-filled on each side in your walkout basement.