Just got my stem wall poured for a small cabin build and the anchor bolts came out looking rough. Some stick up higher than others, a couple are maybe an inch off the line I marked, and one near the corner is angled a bit. Is this just how it goes with a hand-poured wall or should I be pushing the concrete guy to fix anything? My plan was to drill the sill plate myself but now I'm second guessing whether the crooked one will pull the plate out of square if I force it over. It's only off by a little but the wall runs pretty long so I'm worried that little bit adds up by the time I get to the other end. Do people usally just redrill the plate to match whatever the bolts are doing, or is there a trick to straightening them while the concrete is still young? Concrete looks fully cured to me so I'm guessing it's too late for that anyway. Would rather ask now than cut a $400 plate wrong twice.
Is it normal for anchor bolts to be all over the place after the pour?
Oct 17, 2026
Last reply: 8 hours ago
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Don't force the plate over to meet the bolts. Your sill needs to stay square to the foundation, not to the bolts. Snap your chalk lines off the actual wall edges, check diagonals corner to corner, and then drill the plate to match wherever the bolts actually landed. An inch off…
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Don't force the plate over to meet the bolts. Your sill needs to stay square to the foundation, not to the bolts. Snap your chalk lines off the actual wall edges, check diagonals corner to corner, and then drill the plate to match wherever the bolts actually landed. An inch off the line is nothing, you just drill that hole an inch over. What you don't want is to pull the plate out of position becasue the wall and everything above it inherits that error down the length of the run. The angled one at the corner is the only one I'd actually deal with. If it's tilted enough that the plate won't sit flat or the nut won't tighten down square, you've got a couple options. You can sometimes straighten a bolt by threading two nuts on, running them tight together, and using them as a handle to gently work the bolt plumb, but only a little at a time and you risk snapping it if it's over a few degrees. The cleaner fix is to cut it off below the plate line and set an epoxy anchor a couple inches over, drilled through the plate like normal. Any lumberyard or big box store has the kits and it's a 15 minute job once you're set up. As for the heights being uneven, that's normal on a hand pour. You can grind the tall ones down with an angle grinder and a cutoff wheel, and for the short ones, if there's enough thread exposed to get a nut and washer on with the plate on top, you're fine. If one is buried too deep, same answer, cut it and epoxy a new one. And yeah, cured is cured. You can nudge bolts in the first day or so while it's still green, but at this point don't bother trying to work them back into position. Also worth a call to your concrete guy anyway, some will come back and make it right, and if he's not willing to at least look at it you know something for next time.
One thing I'd add before you start drilling, measure how much thread you actualy have on each of the short ones before you cut anything, because a washer plus nut plus plate thickness eats up more height than people expect. When I did my shop slab I laid the plate over the bolts, marked through from the underside with a sharpie, and drilled off those marks instead of the chalk line, which took the whole layout question out of the equation. Also, if you do go the epoxy route at that corner, keep the hole a good couple inches in from the edge of the wall so you don't blow out the concrete, that corner is probably where the least margin is.
Before you drill anything, check the top of the wall itself with a straightedge. On my garage pour the bolts were all over the place height-wise and it turned out the whole top had a low spot in the middle. The bolts were the symptom, not the problem. A sill sitting on an uneven wall will rock no matter how perfect your holes are. I floated some grout under the low section and it made everything easier. If yours is flat then yeah, just drill to match the bolts and move on.
Update: snapped chalk lines off the wall edges like suggested and drilled the plate to wherever the bolts actually were. That part went fine, the inch-off one didn't matter at all. But I ran a straightedge along the top and there's a low spot mid-span, so the plate rocks even though the bolts line up. Can I shim under the sill with anything, or does that need grout?
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