Soil Testing Report

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Soil Testing Report

Soil Testing Report

You know that a healthy, rich soil will give you the best opportunity to achieve high yields. After you’ve collected a quality soil sample and delivered it to a soils laboratory of your choice, what comes next? Reviewing your soil analysis report! Remember geo services for best soil testing report in Melbourne.

The soil analysis report that you will receive back from the lab should consist of all the attributes of the soil test you selected when you sent off your samples.

Geo services provides the best and high quality soil testing report services with effective and affordable price in all popular suburbs in Melbourne, Australia.

What Should I Do Now? (soil testing report)

Although no soil analysis is perfect, the information and insight from a soil test can help you to improve your nutrient efficiency, diagnose in-season plant deficiencies, and ultimately prevent unnecessary yield loss. To make the best fertilizer applications on your fields, consult with your independent agronomist or fertility specialist.

If your next step is to purchase soil prebiotics, soil probiotics, or other crop nutrition products to improve your soil following your analysis report results, FBN Direct® offers a range of solutions available for delivery directly to your farm. Shop online 24/7 with full insight into pricing and discounts upfront – no rebates, zone pricing, or haggling required.

After adjusting your fertilizer program based on the results of your soil analysis, you’ll want to make sure your updated fertilizer program is helping your soil… not hurting it. With Gradable® Plan, you’ll receive soil sampling and a custom-designed annual crop nutrition program from our experts focused on delivering the right combination of fertilizer, biological treatments, and regenerative practices to meet your farm’s needs. Click here to learn more about the progra

The results of a soil test are rarely front of mind for someone building their own home. Rather, excitement builds as they – together with their building designer – draft floor plans and elevations for their new dream home and see it come to life on paper (or on the computer screen in beautiful 3D rendered images).

However, the very nature of the land you build on is perhaps the biggest variable of a building project and the one aspect that is critical you get right before kicking off the construction phase. That’s where soil testing and site classification come in. They provide the information needed to understand what’s happening underground and how to build on it.

But not all soil test results are the same.

Even though all soil tests for residential building projects must conform to the same Australian Standards AS 2870 (for single dwelling houses, townhouses and similar structures) there are differences in how tests are done on site, in the quality and readability of the soil test report, and potentially even differences in the final site classification given for the block.

To ensure a solid start to any building project – and minimise problems or delays later in the build – it’s wise to first focus on getting a quality soil test completed by a reputable engineering company.

Before we get into what makes for a quality soil test and site classification report, let’s cover some fundamentals.

What’s the difference between site classification and soil testing?

Soil testing (for building construction) and site classification are essentially two sides to the same coin. They allow you to understand your soil before you start planning your build or designing the foundations.

The Soil Testing Report

The Soil Test has two components:

Field soil analysis to collect soil, data and site measurements
Laboratory tests on the soil samples taken

The field component includes the extraction of soil samples, documentation of the existing soil strata and collection of field data, such as bearing capacity – thereby determining the suitability of the soils to place load upon it e.g. weight of dwelling.

It is also a requirement as part of the site investigation, to document other factors that may affect the long term stability of the designed foundations, e.g. trees, drainage, slope, existing structures, etc.

The lab component involves undertaking laboratory tests so as to determine the soil’s capacity to swell and shrink in the course of the life of the dwelling under normal site conditions.

Laboratory Soil Testing Report
Once site samples have been transported to a laboratory, the soil may be tested to assess a range of indicators. It should be noted that STA has its own laboratory that is NATA accredited (not all soil labs are).
Reactivity— how much the soil is going to heave (expand) or settle (shrink back down) when we add or remove water. This is calculated using a formula for characteristic surface movement, as well as the soil suction zone depth for the region in which the site is located.
Salinity— the level of salts in the soil. High salinity may cause corrosion of steel reinforcing within concrete. To account for this, additional concrete cover, a double vapour barrier and/or an increase in concrete strength may be required to protect the steel and mitigate corrosion.
Permeability— the speed at which moisture (or water) moves through a soil and what volume of water the soil can hold. This is used for wastewater design such as septic systems.
More specifically, the following list describes some of the main tests undertaken to determine the above soil characteristics:
1. Shrink Swell
2. Liquid Limits
3. Linear Shrinkage
4. Moisture Content
5. Atterberg Limits
6. P Values
STA also has the ability to undertake other soil testing requirements when deemed necessary.