bulging block wall, can I fix it?

[m Ransley]

How old is the house, maybe a new foundation and wall is needed , simple ???

[William Deans]

Greetings,

After you are done with the anchors you might consider leveling your wall with mortar and then painting with drylock, etc. It won't do anything structurally to help you but you will be very glad you did when you go to sell the house.

William

[Lillian Riddle]

Block wall in the basement is bulged out a couple inches. Horizontal crack about 30 ' long. Am getting estimates on putting wall anchors in. The anchors consist of 9' threaded rods which are ran through the wall and attached to a plate inside and an anchor plate in the yard. This sounds like such a simple job that I was thinking about attempting it myself. Think I should try to do this myself? Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

[ameijers]

IMHO, if you are gonna be digging up the yard anyway, better to do the job right and rebuild the wall, adding proper backfill and drainage this time, and fixing whatever grading/gutter/sloped porch problems led to the bowed wall. (I'm assuming this is the classic hydrostatic pressure damage, not a slumping hill or something.) Even if these wall anchors keep the wall from moving, they won't stop the water that is probably causing the problem. With a bulge that big, is there current leakage after big rains, or evidence it has leaked in past? And has a Real Engineer looked at the problem, or just the 'basement repair' guy? Anchors like that, interior piers, etc, are all just temporary fixes. Agreed, temporary may be long enough to sell the house, or even the rest of your life, but IMHO they aren't a proper fix.

aem sends...

[nicksanspam]

A friend with a similar problem has a large concrete patio over the ground outside the basement wall. Could he fix it from the inside by drilling horizontal holes through the wall and out under the patio and installing something like giant screw anchors or moly bolts?

Nick

[Doug Boulter]

"Lillian Riddle" wrote on 11 Feb

2005:

A 30 foot long crack at a bulge of several inches indicates that you aren't too far away from a total failure of that wall, with potentially catastrophic results for your house.

As another poster has mentioned, you need to know what is causing the bulge. In my location, that would be a classic marine clay problem which wall anchors will not even begin to fix.

If you haven't had a soils engineer take a look at this, you probably should do so before undertaking any repair, unless you know a whole lot more than you're telling us.

[Doc]

"ameijers" wrote in news:JxoPd.198468$ [e-mail]:

To add my two cents, just (9 months) bought a house with same concerns. The cracks were not as big, only about an eighth of an inch at the bigest. As this was discovered during a buyers inspection there was no doubt as to the responsibility and the seller really stepped up to the plate. As a result I ended up learning more about foundation repair (more than I really cared to) and the previous poster is correct. Figure out and address the cause of the problem before you make repairs. At this point it appears that your wall may be unstable and could collapse without being stabilized. There is little point in adding anchors if the wall is already past the point of stability. I would also take advise in this group with a grain of salt, as the proper repair for your house will be dependent on variables that none of the usenet members can see. In my case the solution was to open the block walls and add rebar and concrete to the cores. Other solutions included poured pilasters (reinforced concrete colunms added to the inside of the basement walls), carbon fiber mats epoxied to the inside of the basement walls and soldier columns (steel columns bolted to the footings and supporting the walls. Soil anchors were not an option as the soil is very sandy and the anchors would probably not hold. I also would recommend evaluation by a civil engineer. This works for two reasons. First, if you decide to sell the house and there are questions about the repair, having a treatment designed by an engineer will help put concerns to bed as opposed to "well the contractor seemed to know the solution to the problem". This is not a cut at the contractors, in my case the contractor understood the problem very well and in fact specialized in this kind of repair, but in 5, 10, or 20 years no one will have heard of the contractor but the engineers license will still demonstrate competence. As to the price, the engineer was cheap, only a couple of hundred dollars for the inspection and design. the repair was a little more precious, about $5K. The cause of the problem? The house was reroofed about 1 1/2 years ago and the roofer talked the homeowner into leaving gutters off the house. Over time water saturated the soil near the house and created pressure on the walls. So, first get someone with a license to inspect the situation and make recommendations for the proper fix. Then use your own common sense to address the problem. Keep in mind that this is the most expensive thing you own and ask yourself if you want to gamble with it by attempting to shortcut the fix. This is not a situation like adding a dishwasher where if you do it wrong it costs a couple of hundred bucks in "learning expenses", if this goes wrong it could ruin your house.