# Haydock (cinder) block slab perimeter



## the_automat (Jul 28, 2014)

Hello.
I'm about to begin building a cabin near Broken Bow, Oklahoma - and after looking around at other new construction in the area, I'm finding that almost everything on a slab is built with a method completely foreign to me (I'm from the flat blackland of northeast Texas). Broken Bow, by the way, is in the Ouachita mountains. My spot is up on a hill top, dark land that's a little sandy and pretty rocky. The rock is mostly calcite quartz I think. At any rate, cabins up there are typically built on a footer (16" deep) which holds an above-grade perimeter of haydock (cinder) blocks. They put red sand beneath the slab to keep it from sweating.

My original inclination was to excavate and then bring in compactible soil and pour onto that, but nobody up there seems to do it that way. I'm wondering if it's just a regional preference? It would save me a lot of money to use the cinder block method and not have to bring in probably 10 or more loads of compactible dirt, but for some reason it makes me a little bit uneasy. Anybody have experience with this? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.


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