To replace or not brick foundation…
Hello All,
We are in a bit of a pickle here with respects to having our original ~1905 brick foundation replaced on our house. The wife is not sure we ‘need’ to do it. What seems to be tripping her up is that ‘everyone tells us we should do it, yet the vast majority of them still have their original brick foundations’
To review: 3-story Victorian with original brick foundation that looks like its had a parge coat some time in recent history. The parts of the foundation that have not been parged I can see that the mortar is starting to fail. No falling out bricks yet but they are not locked tightly in either. The house is in earthquake country in a liquifaction zone. The soil is mostly sandy with a high water table.
My reasoning for doing the foundation now is this: First we are planning on staying here for at least the next 20yrs and the chances of there being a good shaker within the next 20yrs has to be 100%. Second: I want to level the floors before we start the serious fixing up. Third: Not doing it seems like making a golden statue with feet of clay….
Her reasoning-its a ton of money ~$100,000 and a lot of the people in the same area with the same type of house still have their original brick foundations that went thru at least 2 really big earthquakes and they are still standing…
What do y’all think? To me it seems like a no-brainer do the foundation and start the rehad with a solid base… Most of the houses for sale here fix the entire place up except the foundation and they still sell really well. In fact there does not seem to be a significant price differenc between original foundation homes and new foundation homes…
Daniel Neuman
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
Replies
Thats a pickle for sure. Damned if ya do damned if ya don't.
Since your staying for twenty years I would redo it. Piece of mind.
How many feet of foundation in total? How deep? Full foundation?
How think is the wall itself?
Sounds like a high estimate 100,000 but I don't know all the variables.
By the way who is telling you to redo? masons?
Edited 3/28/2007 6:11 pm ET by AllTrade
Do you or the neighbors know when some of the foundation was parged? If this is holding up, no shifting or cracks? Might consider doing the same on the rest of the foundation. Might stop further deterioration of the mortar.
As mentioned, if you actually will stay here for 20 years. $5K/year might be good piece of mind. As far as resale you probably won't get your money out of it. Most buyers are assuming the foundation is fine or maintained.
Is the 100K involve jacking the house and moving it off site, or replacing sections of the foundation. Sounds a tad bit expensive.
Yes I agree that when you look at it as 5000/yr it seems like cheap piece of mind. I think thats a great argument to use with my wife.
The parging work was most likely done ~10years ago. Even if I parged the entire foundation you can't bolt down a house to a brick foundation and if we get a good shaker like the NorthRidge quake it'll bounce the house off the foundation no problem.
The ~$100k involves lifting the house in place, breaking out the old foundation and installing a new perimeter foundation and slab with underslab and perimerter drains leading to an exterior sump pit that gets pumped to the street. That also includes the foundation for the center bearing wall and some re-framing. I actually have not got any 'offical' bids yet that just seems to be a number that several of the contractors have thrown out...except for the one guy who looked at it for all of 10 min said it was going to cost $120,000 then submitted a bid after thinking about it for a while for $126,000....
Daniel Neuman
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
Not all areas of Oakland or San Francisco are subject to liquifaction. In areas where there is very loose ground such as Taiwan, San Fernando Valley, Marina District and Mexico City, there is an obvious sign. When a big truck or bus goes by it rattles the windows.
If your ground does shake, I still would not replace the foundation.
I would instead build two footing stem walls, under the house, 2' from the existing wall that is perpendicular to the floor joist. Blocking between the joist on top of a new mudsill with anchor bolts hanging into the new footing forms can be done for less than $5K with a pumper.. Block areas out for full underfloor access.
Edited 3/29/2007 2:42 pm by Sungod
Well according to the USGS its in an offical liquifaction zone.
Your idea sounds workable to a point. If I understand what you are saying. Basically build a new foundation inside the original-tie it into the framing and be done with it? I've never heard the term flood-joist.
Daniel Neuman
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
you know i like sungods idea.forget the extra space, just get the house solid and flat. i would think you could go in the 2' and run a footing that would go out and hit the old one to help stabilze it. then you and i mean you[if you can tackle this house you shouldn't be scared of nutin] go in and stack some icf's and fill em .you might even be able to from the sound of your floor conditions,cut access holes in the floor to assit filling the icfs and later installing sill anchors. i can't imagine something like that costing over the 20k mark.larryhand me the chainsaw, i need to trim the casing just a hair.
You know that is a very practical solution to our problem...I'll have to think on it and see how much space that'll leave us. We really need the space though for our metal workshop, storage (we have an insane amount of halloween stuff) and a couple of rooms and a bath...
Daniel Neuman
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
Where are the pictures of the existing foundation?
I'm on dialup and don't want to leave through a hundred photos to find them
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After the demo is done this weekend and the place is all cleaned up I will post pics of the foundation. Sorry there really aren't any taken yet.
Daniel Neuman
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
I have been thinking about this for a few minutes. It's definitely a conundrum.I suspect that whatever your insurance policy says about earthquake damage should affect this decision.
I have been thinking about this for a few minutes. It's definitely a conundrum.
I suspect that whatever your insurance policy says about earthquake damage should affect this decision.
That's a good point. The horrible truth is, is that its nearly impossible to get earthquake insurance in CA. It is offered by the state but it is horribly expensive and hardly covers bunk-so its considered worthless by everyone a sick joke really. Common knoweldge is that if your house gets knocked down in an earthquake it better 'catch' on fire. Standard CA homeowners insurance will cover the fire but not the earthquake. Lots of people think that's why the marina district of San Fran burned so quickly after the Loma Preiata quake.
Daniel Neuman
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
Just got another quote for the foundation. This was a guy who I cold called out of the phone book with no reccomendations. He had a bit of the meth-head whiff about him... His quote came in for $77,000.. I have not read his quote yet so I'm not exactly sure if I'm comparing apples here or what. So I have one quote from the highly reccomended guy at $126,000 and one from this guy....I am still waiting on two more bids from two highly respected local guys. No way I'm going with the low bidder but its good to maybe get the bounds.
Daniel Neuman
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
I'd be more interested to know what the condition of the footers are. Back then a lot of houses didn't even have footers.
From what I can tell in the areas that are exposed I highly doubht that there are any footers. You're right in that they didn't really build 'em that way around here back then. No frost you know.
Daniel Neuman
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
Edited 3/30/2007 7:47 pm by madmadscientist
Just got off the phone with another foundation contractor. This is the one I've worked with before and who I trust. He thinks he can do it for around $80,000. That's not peanuts but I trust that number far better than any others I've seen.
This is for Piffin I think. There is about 156 lineal feet around the outside that needs to be replaced and about 44 lineal feet for the bearing wall down the middle. There is about 1000 sq ft of rat proofing that needs to be removed and replaces with a real slab.
Daniel Neuman
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
I looked at your web site. It's a neat looking house.
Yea - I looked at a house here from around 1900. It was right across from where I was building a new one and and some guys were replacing the full width front porch floor structure and the front door was bound up so it was barely operable - it had obviously already been (angle) cut off several times, so they were making some attempts to level the structure too. What the original builder had done for at least some parts of foundation was just lay solid brick on the flat down on the ground. It's called a flat header course. It appeared that that the only excavation that was done was just enough to level the ground so as to have a flat area to lay the bricks. I can't exactly remember but I believe that it was basically a pier and curtain foundation. This house wasn't a shack. It was maybe a 2400 sq ft 2 story with some moderately heavy exterior trim and when I looked inside the front door I saw a good sized stairway with nice balustrade. It had a hip roof and the upper half of the house was cedar (I assume) shakes. Kind of a cool house but not my cup-o-tea for "technical reasons.
We don't really have a frost line here either, but current code requires a minimum of a 12" deep footer. Gives a little different meaning to "they don't build them like they used to".
What I want to do when I grow up is build new houses that look like old houses. I've build a few like that already. While building the one that I mentioned above, the cabinet guy asked me how long the restoration had taken thus far... :-)
I am in the same situation that we bought an old house with brick foundation and need to determine if we need to change to concrete foundation or not, same comments running between our families. Your post is very helpful. Is it possible to get contact information for your foundation contractor. You can send me at ohmmadp@gmail.com It will be a big help.
Thanks