Development and Engineering Aspects of the AZFS MoistureLevel Smart Foundation System

About the Authors

Bob Brown is the Owner and President of Arizona Foundation Solutions (AZFS) and developer of the Moisture Level System (MLS). Brown has a Bachelor of Design Science degree in Housing and Urban Development (1984) from the School of Architecture and a Bachelor of Science in Finance degree from the School of Business (1984), both at Arizona State University. AZFS has performed over 8,000 house foundation investigations and stabilized or repaired more than 4,000 homes over the last 15 years. Brown has been working on the development of the MLS system for more than 15 years, has patented the procedure and has installed the MLS on over 1,000 home sites since 2014 to help reduce and control soil expansion under home slabs.

J. David Deatherage, P.E. is a senior geotechnical engineer and President of Copper State Engineering, Inc. Deatherage has a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering (1978) and a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering (1980), both from Arizona State University. Deatherage has worked with geotechnical remediation alongside Brown for more than 15 years and provided technical support to Brown during the multi-year development of the MLS. While working on his Master’s Degree at Arizona State University in 1979, Deatherage developed a system of soil loading on model steel culverts that used pressurized air flowing through sand to simulate lateral earth pressures. It was found through both literature review and experimentation that a linear head loss of air pressure through the sand was experienced when the total air pressure head loss through the sand was a small percentage of the atmospheric exit pressure.

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