To All
Hi, I’m the new guy. I have a question. How would you fix permanently, a block and pad foundation so that the moving of the house is completely eliminated? It was built on gumbo clay fill dirt and has been here 30 yrs. I had it raised and leveled and reinforced with additonal blocks and pads 3 yrs ago and completely redid the entire house dirt to sky. It is a wood frame house 32×60 single story. My idea is to do perimeter concrete piers or helical piers and then place 4 to 6 steel i beams or heavy treated timbers across the width of the house for the existing foundation to set on. What do ya’ll think? Would something like this be rediculously expensive?
Waiting to hear!
206launch
Replies
Greetings launch,
As a first time poster, Welcome to Breaktime.
This post, in response to your question, will bump the thread through the 'recent discussion' listing again which will increase it's viewing.
Perhaps it will catch someone's attention that can help you with advice.
Cheers
Edited 7/5/2008 3:37 pm ET by rez
Greetings Washington Co Neighbor from jsut up the road in Bryan!
My idea is to do perimeter concrete piers or helical piers and then place 4 to 6 steel i beams or heavy treated timbers across the width of the house for the existing foundation to set on. What do ya'll think? Would something like this be rediculously expensive?
Well, depends on how much you are willing to spend, as that defines expensive.
For our climate and soil, a full perimeter foundation wall is what you want. Controlling the amount of warm (or hot) air at our humidity levels from being under the house will be a great benefit.
Now, there are several ways to achieve that. In DIY, a person could start with a short section of wall, and dig in a footing for block to set upon. Depending on the type and placement of the existing pads and pier blocks, they can be integrated into the new work. Note that this will be hard, dirty, awful work. But, the labor cost will be whatever you thing your time is worth.
The engineering answer to your question, given that I'm not an engineer, is probably you need to get 18" into undisturbed soil and place a footer in the 16-18" wide by 6-8" thick range, and using concrete ins th e2800-3200 psi range and no sloppier than a 5-6" slump.
Now, a person could get a house mover (used to be a decent one over in Burton, there's a good one almost in Carlos on 30) and just raise the house entire to a handy working height.
But, that gets you to a tricky dilemma. With the house in the air makes it easy to do things like use a pump to pour the footings monolithically, and then to use ICF on those fottings for a very elegant foundation wall.
No, the quesion then becomes, since you are in the air, and have intermediate points of support to address, why not go ahead anddi a storm/wine/mechanical space in anyway? Usually, the answer there is what will the labor costs be like. With the right headroom, a walk-behind skid sterr could make easy work of it, even renting it But, that will cost a bit more to buy with a profit margins attached.
Now, with all this on your plate, do not forget that you will need a good thorough termite treatment to properly finish this. This can be especially true if you take advantage of this, to add, say, a brick or stone veneer to the new foundation to give a "base" to the house visually.