I am thinking about buying a 100 year old house that has been converted into a triplex. The foundation is what they call rubble stone. It is various sized stone very loosely cemented in place. It appears that they finished the basement more recently as there is a cement floor and an approx 2 or 3 foot thick and about 4 feet high cement wall that stops about three feet below the mud sill. The mud sill appears to a couple feet above grade all around and didn’t have any obvious rot.
The stone part of the foundation is not obvously falling down or leaning in any obvious direction but you can see substantal daylight between the stones in at least 6 to ten spots.
I havent made an offer or spent alot of time inspecting the basement yet. Just wondering if I should run away screaming soley because of the daylight or if that is something that is no big deal by itself and could easily be repaired by a stone mason or if I would be looking at jacking up the house and pouring a new wall or using cinderblock or something to fix it right. By the way it is a two story house with approx 1000 sq feet per floor. I would not be living there it would just be for renting out. Thanks for any help. Brian
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The right guy can fix it. And there are probably two different "right guys" -- one who'll do the whole jack-it-up-and-install-modern-foundation deal and another who knows how to repair a stone foundation in place.
The wrong guy will botch it, but probably not enough to cause severe damage, unless he lifts the house and drops it.
Well my house is circa:1680 and plenty of people looking to buy this went away screaming cept me. And what apears to be cement between the rubble rock foundation wall is whats called parging...its not really holding the stones toegether like cement does.
This house stood here 326 years years like this and this house was a TOTAL mess (see my website below) so......
What I did was to hand dig VERY CAREFULLY around the entire foundation of rubble rock...I then power washed between the stones and poured another foundation rightr up against it...the cement washed into the stone where ever there was an opening crack or crevice. BE VERYYYYYY careful if you do this...the idiot operator of the cement truck opened up the chute really fast in spite of me telling him t go very slow...he blew hole in the wall and now I have a cemnet floor that used to be dirt. Thank god nothing happened to the house...whewwwwwww.
BE sure to brace the wall from inside when you pour as well.
Its no tthta big of a deal to do...just time consuming. Do a little at a time if you want.
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