Crumbling block foundation on one section of house
I just replaced a small hopper window in my basement and as I was chipping out some of the concrete sill cap of the old window, it opened up a small hole in my block foundation where I could see that below, much of the webbing of the blocks had crumbled (only partially) due to water damage (due to there being no kick out on the downspout for who knows how long). I already knew about this water damage from the mold on that wall, but seeing into the guts of it was worse than I thought…
My question is this: since this is only about a 10 foot length section of this wall that has lost some integrity, do you think a possible fix to it would be to just grind out the face of a few of the top blocks from the exterior (through the stucco) and pour concrete into the foundation wall until it has filled up the whole wall? To me, that seems like an easy, not too invasive, fix that would add a lot of support, but just want to make sure I’m thinking through everything.
Thanks!
I’m in Minnesota if that matters
Replies
I had a similar issue on my older house, where the block came up about 4 feet, and then there was a framed wall on top of it. I pulled off the wood plate, put rebar in the cells and poured in concrete. I probably over did the rebar, but it was a cheap fix.
I'm not a structural engineer (was a mechanical one at in the past), but the solution seemed to make a lot of sense to me. There are insulated foam forms that get filled, so even if some of the block had weakened, the new fill was way stronger. Also, around here it's code to fill them anyway.