Hello all first timer here looking for advice / solution
have a 30 yr old house with poured foundation at the back approx 30″ of cement is above ground house is about 65 ft long & there is a section in the middle about 30 ft long that has bowed in along the back of the house
at the top where the brick sits on it it has gone in towards the house approx 2 to 2 1/2 in assume it was from snow melt & then ground freezing shoving wall in ?? it has been like that for about 4 yrs going to call a couple contactors & get their take on repairs but thought i would ask here if anyone has experience with a home solution
one idea i had & got no idea if it would work is to sink a few posts in the ground about 8 ft from the house, trench to the house & put a threaded rod through the wall & secure it to the post, then just try tightening it up to pull the wall back out
figure you could put tension on it when the ground is soft & over the course of a year or 2 pull it back straight like i said just looking for idea’s that don’t involve supporting the house & replacing the wall any & all comments & advice appreciated
thanks
bob
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Can you see the inside face of the wall? You sort of imply that you can and say that the top of the wall has moved in. Has any of the rest of the wall moved any? Or is it just the top of the wall. You absolutely have to identify where the pressure on the wall is being applied.
If you have an ice lens forming, i.e. a very wet spot in the ground that is freezing and expanding, thereby pushing on the outside of the wall and then pushing the wall in. You must dry the ground out and get rid of the water. When the ground thaws out the earth tend to sink into the space where the ice lens was formed and filling in the earth. That settled earth must be removed by excavation. the ice lens while frozen is very hard and incompressible. The settled soil is also relatively firm and difficult to compress. The ice and or settled soil must be removed to make any gain in straightening the wall. If the wall is poured concrete then the wall either has to tilt or crack to move in.
After you remove the pressure from the wall, you will probably be able to push back straight and plumb. Then you can backfill it with well draining soil or gravel and top with a clay cap to keep the water from building up again.
Hope this helps,
Jim
If those posts are about 3' diameter and set about 20' deep that might work
Dig to the footing so there is no soil pressure laterally on the wall, then you can possibly jack it out from inside
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Ditto to what Sphere and Piffin said. You'll have to trench down to foundation level outside the problem wall. There is a surprisingly large earth pressure when you push towards the outside without the trench, the forces really are tremendous. You won't get there without some diggin'.
Once the excavation is done, jacking against the opposite inside wall will work better than pulling against improvised ground anchors. I'm assuming that the ground on opposite sides of the house is at the same level, of course. Replace with free-draining, non-frost susceptible soil (gravel or CLEAN sand), cap and then grade to direct surface water away from the house.
Edit: Not mentioned above, but make sure you spread the jacking loads REALLY well, against the problem wall and the (presumably intact) opposite wall. The foundation is already cracked and weakened. With a vertical crack, probably best to use timbers to spread load to both sides at the same time. Seal the exterior wall when you're done.
Edited 7/28/2009 2:30 pm ET by PeterThomson