Addition pulling away – questions to ask
I have been in my home for two years and the house is 20 years old. My sun room, which is supported by columns and is surrounded on two sides by a deck seems to be pulling away from the house. Last year, I noticed my fiberglass door was binding as it closes. Now it won’t close and some windows are out of alignment. I live in the northeast and we just had a lot of snow, which started to melt a few days ago. I noticed leaks in the roof where the roof line meets the house. After looking closely around the room I noticed cracks in the wallboard and a noticeable one hidden in a closet (corner).
I do not plan to do this myself as it is way above my skill level. What I am asking is for help in hiring the right contractor. What questions should I ask them? What experience should they have as I would guess there would be some jacking of the floor and new columns needed? The room is sitting on pressure treated columns over concrete footings (I assume they are not just posts in the ground as I have not crawled under the deck to look at them). I assume there will also be some roof work as well.
Would I expect that they would want to dismantle the deck in order to get underneath the room?. Right now, you can only crawl under there. If they do, can they work with the frame still intact? I know these questions may not be able to fully answered as you would need to see it but this is something I surely was not planning on doing this year so not only am I trying to get this fixed but to do it with as little money as possible. Thank you.
Replies
Is the sun room built on an old patio or something else? Can you define the sunroom a little more eg construction?
Any drainage or rainwater runoff issues in the area?
Where are you?
A lot of sunrooms are built on patio slabs that have no footing therefore not intended to support much of a load if any at all.
I do not believe it was built on an old patio and I believe it is original to the house although I can't be 100% sure. It is 13.5x19 with 4 posts lined up on the wall farthest from the house. I would say it is typical frame construction. It is not one of those advertised sun rooms you add after the fact. It is a three season room.I live in Derry, NH, which has a lot of wetlands, therefore, high water tables. I would not say I have drainage issues where the house is but I did get some water in the basement through a crack last year (crack was fixed). We also had tons of rain during that time too.
The obvious is the foundation of the sunroom is experiencing settling from something. First place to investigate woudl be what is there for a footing for the sunroom. Your description of it being added post facto makes me very suspicious of what's under the posts. A hole dug with a post hole digger along the slab/footing can reveal a lot of information.
I assume that the sunroom floor is slab/concrete? See any cracking there?"
I assumed as much and no, the floor is tile over a subfloor with no cracking.
If you can find one, an original floor plan might tell you everything you need to know. (Well, a lot of it, anyway - lol) I see a fair bit of this although it's usually on much older houses.
The original house had a porch or maybe a deck with a foundation or support system adequate for a porch or deck.
Somewhere along the way, someone screened it in. No real problem since the additional structure doesn't overload the support system.
Later on, someone else adds walls to create a "three season" room. Now, the loads are probably enough to really strain the original support system.
Finally, the room is turned into a full blown addition and the original support structure begins to fail because it just can't handle the loads.
Find your self a good GC, a foundation contractor, or a structural engineer and have them look at your problem. It's probably fixable although you may want to be sitting down when you hear the cost.
Dave,You hit it. After calling the town, it turns out that in '94 a permit was pulled to turn an existing deck into the present sun room. Not sure why after 13 years it is settling like it is but it seems it may have to do with the beam and support system. Unfortunately, the ground is frozen so not much can be done to fix the problem now. Although, I will probably have the room jacked up a bit and add longer support beams to make it through to spring.
Clouts -
Am I good, or what? Send your address so I can send the bill for my diagnostic fee. Awww, never mind............it's Xmas - lol
Your's is an all to common story. Little things adding up over the years leaving someone stuck with a real problem.
Depending on how much (and how fast) things are moving, you may be able to get away with some temporary cribbing until a real fix is possible. It won't be pretty, but stabilizing the addition is the name of the game for right now.
Yeah, I think that is what I need to do until the ground thaws.
I will assume the wood posts are tied to the footing with post ties. The footing may be cracked, undersized etc. I would dig around the footing to see how large and deep it is. If the footings need to be replaced, the front ones are probably accesible without removing the floor. If the footings close to the house foundation are bad then you probably have to remove the floor.How about the sunroom, is it also pulling away? From your post I assumed only the deck is pulling away.Does the roof also cover the deck? Or does the roof cover the sunroom only?
Before the jacking is done the roof has to be separated from the house wall,remove a row or two of shingles and flashing. When the jacking is complete the roof can be tied back in.
You need a general contractor.Find a contractor first, you may be able to save a few dollars by removing the deck if it is needed.
mike
Mike,The deck is OK. The room is on its own support system and is settling. It is looking more and more like the footings do need to be replaced. I had one contractor over today and spoke a to a few others. Can't be 100% sure until the ground thaws.The roof only covers the sun room and it is fairly flat - rolled asphalt. However, it may be ice damming that caused the leaks. Not sure on that either but we will see as I have cleared all the snow from the roof. Next rain will tell me what is going on.By the way, the sun room is lag bolted into the foundation where it meets the house - no support posts.
Sounds to me like the footings are definitely the problem.
What depth did the plans spec. for footing depth? I'm guessing that there's at least a sketch on file if there was a permit pulled....even so there's no guarantee that the depth was actually met. My experience with aforementioned-town building dept. is that they may or may not have required/performed footing inspections.( I've worked in Derry).
Is the ledger really lagged to the foundation, or is it lagged to the rim joist?
Where is this fiberglass door that binds/sticks?....... is it the entry door from the house or is it the exit door to the deck?
roll roofing and ice damming is a recipe for leakage.....typically no ice and water was used under the roll roofing, I'm guessing "double coverage" roll roofing......meaning an 18" overlap and 18" exposure to the weather.....
What's the distance from the bottom of the sunroom floor joist to the ground under the room?
Are you sure this isn't frost heaving........since the ground has been frozen for a while......or did this exist prior to freeze-up?
Geoff
Geoff,According to the town, 4' is the depth of the footings and the room is lagged to the rim joist.The door is the exit door to the deck. The door into the house is fine. The distance from the bottom of the sunroom floor joist to the ground under the room is approximately 18" or so - enough to crawl under.It could be frost heaving but when I bought the house the door was fine. If I recall correctly, one window seemed off. Earlier this year, the door started binding. The top corner would bind in the jamb but would close. Now the door does not close and the windows seem to be more off on the side where the door is.
Sliding door?
Most of the time adjustment is possible, to get you thru the winter.
Sometimes rollers freeze up or break. Depending on the door brand, replacement rollers might be available.A Great Place for Information, Comraderie, and a Sucker Punch.
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
http://www.quittintime.com/
No slider.
From your posts it appears that at least one of the footings in the front of the sunroom has sunk. Has the contractor or you got up on the roof to see if the roofing is torn at the wall line? Sounds to me like you need to replace the front footings when the weather gets warmer. Without actually seeing the sunroom I would think the fix is fairly simple.Temporary shoring while excavating to the bottom of the footing.Then you can see the size of it and how deep. Probably not enough mass to the footing. I would think that 30"x30"x10" would be up to code .Block piers on the footings would be better than posting up.
Many times a sunroom was originally a porch without a roof. Then walls and a roof were added at a later date. If the foundation wasn't upgraded to handle the extra loads then a problem like yours occurs.Is this a possibility?
mike
Mike,I had a couple of people look at it and it appears the footings are the issue and yes, from what I can gather from town records, it used to be a porch, which was converted to a room in 1994.
Check for roof leaks or other inside moisture sources - furnace exhaust condensation,etc.
An historic church that I went to as a kid (Trinity Lutheran, Spfld IL) stood for 150 years with no movement. Large brick and timber edifice, big steeple, etc.
This church is cattycorner across the street from the IL state capitol (to the SW) and think it in on NHR.
Anyway, about 15? years ago there were cracks starting to appear in the East and South Walls. This was shortly after the state of IL built a new large office bldg across the Southern facing street, deep foundation (thru a couple of minor coal seams even), and extensive relatively deep sewer work was also done on Monroe St at that time. There were a number of engineers decend to make announcements about soil conditions, etc, When I visited there during the controversy, there were state inspector bonded expansion test foils across all cracks, state probably thought they could be on the hook for repairs.
Turns out one of the drain pans under the A/C that had been installed in the 70's had developed a very slow leak - never noticed as some of the timber beams absorbed it all. Even longitudinally , the moisture was enough to push the outside Southern wall away from the rest of the building. One of Pop's contractor friends thought of that anc crawled up in the lofts and found the moisture after about 6 months of nobody knowing what was going on.
Fixed the leak, the cracks closed back up.
Clouts
If I were you, I would seek a company that specializes in moving and jacking houses. After it's lifted and stabilized then hire a company to do the other repairs. I've lifted many houses and could never be accurate about the cost of interior repairs so I just figured double or triple if I needed to combine those costs.
Edited 12/26/2007 5:11 pm ET by shellbuilder
Is there any gutters on the front of the room? The way I look at it the most likely scenario is that the front of the room is settling due to excess moisture and inadequate footings. If they were dry it wouldn't move.
As the front moves downward the walls on the sides don't want to move or rack so the whole room starts to roll. This pulls the top away from the house.
When I bought the house two years ago the roof needed replacing. At that time I had a gutter added to the sun room with the downspout coming down around one of the footings although the room seems to be settling on the other side away from the downspout.