Is the foundation straight but not level? Otherwize getting a straight sill plate to follow the foundation is going to be another trick.
I still say "level the foundation". Do it right or walk away.
How warm is it inside? Is is a gas furnace with the pilot light burning? Sometimes that's enough to trip the thermal switch to turn the blower on. If so, turn the pilot off and relight it in the fall.
1) Is is common.
2) He has solutions, but wants a faster one.
I find it interesting that the hive mind here largely wants to talk about the foundation issues instead of addressing the more general question: Is there a reasonable way to rapidly determine the length of a chop saw cut *while standing at the saw* ... this is an interesting question whether or not this particular use case makes sense to you city/comfortable farm dwellers :) Trust me, if you are building in the middle of Hell's Elbow, MT, you do what you have to.
Right. A LOT fewer steps than trying to measure each stud.
You said he was a pro. With an inexperienced helper, it would be done in an hour, tops. This is something a professional framer would've figured out by intuition.
I gave you a really good solution to the problem. I'd be setting trusses by now. :-)
Is this guy a missionary, by chance?
Clare Snyder wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Concrete saw suspended from a level I-beam and pulled along it just like a RAS to nibble the foundation mostly flat?!
Puckdropper
My suggestion was an easy way to deal with it. But your comment gave me another idea.
You could run a tight string line or laser, level, from the highest point of the foundation wall to a clamped stick at the low end. You take a pressure treated sill plate and embed it in mortar on the sloping foundation wall. You just keep tapping down until it's straight and level. Let the mortar cure and then insert anchors down into the foundation wall. The anchors could already be there or be installed prior to setting the sill plate in mortar.
How an earth are the walls crooked? The studs are plum.
My uncle "remodeled" a house on a lake, basically built a new house, around an old house and then tore down the old house, in the new house.
Up upon Lake Beulah, because you could not build new.
I gave you a fairly quick solution that doesn't even require you to take the studs to a chop saw.
Nope.
You didn't address my question as to why "you get what you get" when a foundation is poured in a remote area. Why is it so common that the foundation sucks?
Is it that the good comtractors would charge too much to make the trip, so you have to settle for Larry, Darryl and Darryl?
If it's a cost saving matter, has your pro figured out whether he actually saves anything after spending extra time working around the results of saving that upfront cost?
I'd use concrete, not mortar, for the structural strength
I guess a "portland cement mortar" would work. - (Type "S" - not T"ype N"
DO NOT try it with type N motar - it is too weak in compressive strength.
I don't work with it enough to know, off hand, which is proper. In any case, it would be a good idea to use fiberglass impregnation or a reinforcing mesh.
I still think my first suggestion is the easiest, fastest method and yields perfect results above the foundation wall. It's not all that different from building a stud wall on a stepped foundation.
I don't actually know, as I am not there. My suspicion is that there is not a good supply of contractors that can do it right. You're stuck with whatever is available ... but that's a guess.
Some questions which nobody has asked which I believe have bearing.
1) You say "large". How large is large? Are we talking a 4000 square foot house or are we talking an airship hangar? Do you have the approximate dimensions? 2) The foundation isn't level. How far out of level is it? 3) Is it flat and just down at one end or is it out of flat as well and if so how much?With regard to the question of how you cut to varying lengths with a chopsaw, I have no idea, but can tell you how to do it with a radial arm saw. Two ways. For either you need to make or buy shims or obtain some precision incremental positioner such as an Incra jig.
One is to cut all the studs to a little over the longest length, being as exact as you can, then set the saw up with a stop that will result in trimming the exact amount you need to get to the _shortest_ length. then for the next one put one shim so a little less is cut off,, for the next one two shims, etc. The advantage of this approach is that one person can do it fairly easily, the disadvantage is that you have to cut each stud twice and have twice as many chances to screw up..
The other way is a similar approach but you put the shims at the other end, so you make a jig that holds the stud to the _longest_ length required, then cut one, put in a shim and cut the second one, put in two shims and cut the third, and so on. The disadvantage of the second approach is that you really need two people to be able to do it efficiently, the advantage is that you only cut once.
If this is a very long wall you end up with a lot of shims to juggle as well with either approach.
If you can get by with increments of 1mm or 1/32 inch the original Incra jig can replace the shims for about 60 bucks at the cost of having to be more careful with the adjusting--it's easy to move it one notch too far and not catch it.
Um, yes it does. I don't believe a foundation should deviate nearly as much as what your neighbor is stuck with. My parents 40 year old home had a foundation deviation of about 1" from the front back 65' to the back.
That makes no sense at all. So the problem is he could not afford or chose not to have some one come in that knows how to do it correctly.
That seems plausible but I'm thinking that the sill plate may prematurely rot being embedded in mortar. Maybe not. down here in the Houston area the sill plate does not sit directly on top of the foundation, there is an water proof barrier between the wood and the concrete. I would imagine mortar and wicking might be worse.
Very easy method increase the depth of the sole plate by whatever the deviation is mark it with a string and trim the sole plate accordingly
That was exactly my point. He continues to claim that the remote location had something to do with fact the foundations are continually poured poorly, yet when pressed for a reason, he doesn't have one.
Seems to me that the root cause needs to be addressed as opposed to trying to come up with workarounds. I'm not so rigid that I'm unwilling to accept that there is a reason that pours can't be done correctly. There *has* to be a reason. If the root cause can be eliminated in a reasonable manner, then it should be.
Are you suggesting that he re-saw multiple 2 x 6's at an angle to compensate for the slope? Out in the field?
That'll work too and has the advantage that you end up with level floors and a constant floor-to-ceiling distance.. Neither method is very good if we're talking "airship hangar".
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.