I have an idea I’ve been mulling over – the other day I drove past a large construction dump site, where they hoard huge piles of large concrete rubble. I’m talking about pieces of concrete wall or slab that are anywhere from 4’x8’x8″ to sizes easily picked up by hand. I live in New England, where field stone basements have been holding up houses for 200+ years, now getting retrofitted with 15-mil poly and board insulation.

I’m wondering, why not build a new ‘fieldstone’ foundation out of waste concrete and waterproof it in the same way? This would even remove some of the standard problems of the retrofit, i.e. not being able to lap the vapor and bulk water barrier under the sills because the house happens to already be there, and of course the difficulty of adding perimeter drainage 100 years after laying the stone. Also, the concrete being fairly regular in dimension, flat on two sides, and reinforced with steel might help too.

I’m imagining using very large pieces as a footer, and building up from there. Maybe some additional concrete should be used to smooth the surface to prevent abrasion to the vapor barrier? 

Anyone know of any projects using a technique like this? Or thoughts on the idea?