I have a 12 year old house with a full basement. The front steps (brick) set on a concrete pad poured with the sidewalk. This set-up only settled an inch & a half (1 1/2″) in the first 10+ years. However since then it has settled 10″ total. I have three options as I see it (leaving it is not one of them). 1) Tear it all out, dig down to undisturbed soil or rock (investigate what happened), backfill with gravel then rebuild the steps. 2)Dig down on each side of the steps, install 2-4 jacks, jack up to original position, encase in concrete, cover with dirt. 3) Use some hydrolic grout system to restore to original position. I’m looking for any help, advice or ideas you can offer.
Thanks,
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Replies
10 INCHES in the last 2 years?
Something is way wrong there...serious undermineing is my guess, soil wont compact that way. That fast.
Dig er up find the water flow.
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
There is no cure for stupid. R. White.
10" is pretty amazing. whoever backfilled after the foundation went in must have left some hefty voids to cause that much settlement.
i would tear the whole thing out, excavate to virgin soil (probably the same depth as existing house footer) and put in a new foundation from that point.
carpenter in transition
I agree with Sphere.... something substantial is going on under there and I'd want to find out what's going on before I went and put a band-aid on it. You don't want to be doing this again in the next two years.
Where are you located? Have you had unusually (historically) high levels of precipitation in the last couple years?
I'm in MA and we've been breaking rainfall records for the past couple months. All kinds of weird problems are popping up, from sink holes, to ponding, foundation movement, etc.
dieselpig & others,
Sounds like a concensus on tearing it out. I live in Tennessee. We had drought conditions through the summer months followed by record rain late fall early winter (2004). Once the initial drop occured that year I thought it would stabilize, but it hasn't. It has continued, more slowly than initially, but still giving way.I originally backfilled the basement up to the halfway point with 3/4" gravel (about 4'to 5' deep and 4'out from basement wall)then finished with topsoil. I'm an "old school" carpenter that grew up in the trade. I was doing a great deal of the work myself and there was a time gap between backfill and doing the steps. I should have dug through the backfill at the steps and filled with gravel, but just missed that detail trying to get finished with the house. Now it looks like I get to go back and do it right this time.Thanks for your insight,
yje... i had that same problem with a set of steps ....
i chose solution number 2... lot's of work but it solved the problem
your bad compaction is by now ... good compaction.. with a new spread footing, should be goodMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Sounds almost like someone buried a stump, logs, or other organic material there. I've seen that before. And it took about 8 or 10 years before the settlement really got going. Fortunately, it's always been in woods or backyard, never under a structure.
Let us know what it was when you find out.