Foundation bolts

[Ivan Vegvary]

I'm replacing foundation plates and rim joists on the house. The dry rot is so bad that I can use my bench brush to sweep out the lumber.

I need to replace about 40 lineal feet. I'm jacking up the house (about an inch) from the outside (siding already removed), pulling out the rotten material and replacing it with pressure treated 2x6 lumber. I cannot install foundation bolts on the plates, nor were there any in the first place.

Seems like my only choice would be to get some earthquake straps, drill and bolt the straps vertically to connect the foundation and one of the studs. Repeat every 4 feet.

BTW, this is not high earthquake country.

Anybody have a better idea.

Thanks, Ivan Vegvary

[Chris Friesen]

Drill holes and epoxy in some bolts?

Drill holes and use expansion bolts?

Talk to your local building code guy?

Try googling "foundation bolt"?

Chris

[tbasc]

Simpson Strong Tie web site, among others, has what Chris suggests. T

[Vic Dura]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 05:51:34 GMT, "Ivan Vegvary" wrote Re Foundation bolts:

A good quality construction adhesive liberally applied?

[Heathcliff]

Having the house bolted to the foundation is not just for earthquakes, but also for any high-wind situation -- does your area have hurricanes, tornadoes, or severe thunderstorms? I have seen slides of a house shifted off its foundation by winds of no more than 65 mph. For that matter, it might help in other situations too, like if a car hits the house. I would favor bolts epoxied in. You might be able to rent an angle drill to drill downwards through the sill plate into the foundation to install them.

[Steve Barker]

If it never had any, why worry about it? Most houses I've ever seen don't have the nuts installed on the bolts anyway.

[Ivan Vegvary]

Thanks Chris, Of course I cannot drill vertical holes in the old foundation. 3" of clearance is not enough for an angle drill or a 8" bolt. As I have suggested, I can, on the outside, drill horizontal bolts into the foundation and using a strong-tie bolt to the stud above. Repeat every 4 feet.

Thanks again,

[Wayne Whitney]

I take it from this that the floor system bears directly on the mud sills, and that is why you have can not install retrofit bolts from above? If so, then as another poster suggested, take a look at the Simpson products on this page:

In particular, consider using the FAP product if the edge of the mudsill lines up exactly with the end of the foundation, or the UFP product if it does not. Note that typically these would be used on the inside edge of the foundation, not the outside edge. Be sure to use corrosion resistant fasteners and hardware (hdg or stainless) for anything contacting treated wood or concrete.

Good luck, Wayne

[Ivan Vegvary]

Wayne, you describe the condition exactly. The FAP will work fine. Using corrosion resistant hardware did not occur to me. Thanks for the tip.

Ivan Vegvary

[aemeijers]

That'll work, but my first thought was L-shaped plates on the inside, epoxy-lagged into the block or poured wall, capturing the new sill plates, with maybe a lag screw into the sill plate if the L-plate is wide enough. With plates in opposing directions on either side of house, that should keep it from doing a Dorothy in a windstorm, which is what the bolts are for, unless you live in earthquake country.

aem sends....

[aemeijers]

Chuckle. Seen (or not seen?) that a lot myself. If the framing crew gets ahead of the kid assigned shit duties like that, and the floor gets decked over before anyone notices, it tends to fall through the cracks. And if the J-bolts are rusty, crusted with concrete, or at a bad angle, or too short, and the kid isn't a go-getter....

(My old man was the GC or strawboss, so I pulled a lot of punch list duty as a kid. Putting those washers and nuts on from below, and getting a socket wrench on them, was often a lot of fun, especially in crawlspaces.)

aem sends....

[Chris Friesen]

On the first page of the google results it gives this:

Down near the bottom of that page is a section called "Bolting Homes With Low-Clearance". Might be useful to you.

Chris

[Don Young]

I have seen a lot of houses built on cement block foundations without anything securing the sill plates to the blocks. It does not seem to be a problem and I am not sure that the blocks would help much in an uplift anyhow. Houses have been built for centuries just sitting on rock piles or other supports.

However, I agree that having it bolted down strongly is a good idea. I am not sure that just bolting the sill plates makes it a strong connection between the ground and the rest of the house. It would depend a lot on the type of foundation wall and on the strength of the framing connections.

Don Young

[aemeijers]

Not disagreeing- but back in the old days in the midwest, hurricane straps/earthquake straps would have rated a 'Huh?' As a kid, a pack of tornadoes came through a Real Cheap cookie cutter subdivision my father was strawboss on (after his own high-end custom home company went belly up, it was the only work he could get, much to his embarrasment.) I worked one spring vaction on the cleanup of that subdivision, which was luckily mostly still vacant. Several of the houses were sucked up off the foundations, and the sill plates did stay attached to the joists. The J-bolts were still sticking out of the concrete block, no nuts to be seen. If The J-bolt is in a filled block cavity, and if the block foundation has the proper tie metal every third course, and a rebar in filled holes every X feet, it is pretty solid. A monolithic pour reinforced foundation would be much stronger, probably.

If I ever had the money to build a house, yes I would strap foundation to floor system, floor to studs, walls to rafters, etc. Pretty much what the California,Florida, and similar region codes require. May only need it once every hundred years when Mother Nature gets cranky, but it is so cheap and easy to add during construction, it is real cheap insurance. Retrofit, of course, is a much more expensive PITA.

aem sends....

[Bob]

As I understand it, anchor bolts are for the purpose of preventing the sill from shifting, not necessarily to hold the building to the foundation.

Bob-tx