Kamloops sits in a semi-arid valley where daytime highs hit 35°C in summer and winter lows drop below -20°C. That thermal swing, combined with the city’s mix of glacial till, lacustrine silt, and colluvial slopes, puts shallow foundations through a real stress test. Frost penetration here reaches 1.2 metres in exposed areas, and ignoring it leads to heave that cracks slabs and displaces footings within the first two winters. Our lab runs direct shear and consolidation tests on undisturbed Shelby tube samples from each borehole, feeding verified parameters into bearing capacity models that match the 2015 NBCC and CSA A23.3 requirements. When the site sits on the North Shore benchlands with known silt layers, we often recommend pairing the design with a CPT investigation to map soft lenses that standard drilling might miss.
Kamloops till gives you 300 kPa bearing when it's dry and dense, but add a silt lens at 2 metres and the same footing settles twice as much.
