I’m posting this in both this and Classic, so if you frequent both, please don’t yell at me.
The foundation of our “new” (40 year old) house in Long Island has a very large (~1″) crack in it. The engineer who looked at it said that it doesn’t appear to have affected the structure of the house and we should just fill and waterproof it. So my question is, what is the best way to accomplish these two goals? Do I just pack it with sand mix and tar the outside, buy 200 tubes of silicon, or something else?
Thanks!
Replies
I'd pack the crack with backer rod then fill with single tube epoxy. Make sure you get an epoxy for vertical application or it will run out and make a nice pile on the ground. It might even take 2 tubes but still shouldn't run much over $50.00.
Thanks. I'm having trouble finding epoxies for more than 1/2". You would do this from the outside, correct?
The crack is in the basement wall, vertical, and is caused by settlement when the house was first built. As scary as it looks, the engineer we had look at it before buying was willing to state that he thought it would be OK to just fill it and that no underpinning would be necessary.
>>the engineer we had look at
>>the engineer we had look at it before buying was willing to state that he thought it would be OK
Did he 'say' that orally or in writing?
Thanks. I don't think there is any movement because the drywall, windows and doors around the crack are all in good order and are definitely not new. I was tending towards cementitious because epoxy is too runny, but when I was reading about hydraulic cements there were some who recommended against. The problem with the internet is that some of the info is good but I don't know which info.
I've called back the engineer who has referred me to a foundation guy that they work with. That's what I probably should have done in the first place, but we are bleeding out our startup budget pretty fast and already have less than half what we'd need to fix the deck properly. I just want to get all the safety issues taken care of before we run out of money.
One point is that if it's been there "forever" then there's no emergency to take care of it now. Unless you're doing some work that will either expose the area more or close it up, it can wait. Just take reasonable steps to keep a lot of water water from running into the crack.