Book excerpt: REINFORCED CONCRETE GRADE BEAMS, PILES & CAISSONS A SimplifiedGuideforHillsideEngineering This book is the torchlight for Architects, engineers, contractors & homeowners. It tells about different type of soils & how they create problems when building a structure on it. The book tells the reader about how to solve the problems of soft soil by going deep into foundation by supporting the structure on grade beams, piles & caissons. It brings the information about the role of different professionals who are involved in solving these problems & building a dream structure for an ambitious homeowner. Several homeowners desire to live on nice, isolated, beautiful, dreamlike land. But they do not have any information about how this work is done. Another important characteristic of construction is loads, which are additional loads due to the Alluvium soil, depth of the deep foundation & availability of hard rock & slope of the site location, daylight to the edge of the foundation & water table elevation etc. It discusses the importance of soil report & Geotechnical engineers soil samples. Importance of loads & load combinations are emphasized. Most important aspect is the CODE which has control of the local authority, State authority & International authority. Not only that all the revisions in CODE shall be considered. The book gives several useful formulas for structural engineering calculations for this kind of structures. I have added real life work samples which I have done for design of hillside structures. By Raksha N. Parmar (P.E.) State of California