Ok everyone “I had a bad day”.
Went to my spec home for first time in two weeks and found the slab cracked pretty bad. Went upstairs and the walls on the same side of the house showed signs of settle ( cracks in sheet rock etc). This is a 26×58 ranch on a full foundation with a two car garage under it ( on the gable side).
Looks as if the foundation my mason installed settled at least two inchs between the garage doors. I remember seeing some water in that area when he did the footings. Lucky enough we have a framed 40″ center wall with 2×12 above the doors so I can jack up and slide another plate under the framed wall to make it up “the loss”. We do have a frost wall under the doors and the middle comes up 8″ off grade with the framed wall on top. The frost wall returns 8′ on both sides and shows no signs of trouble.
My only wonderment is why did the floor crack. The floor floats on top of the ridge created by the footing. Shouldnt the floor have stayed put when the middle of the door area 40″ wide went down? Or did they seal together that well when he poured it? Another funny thing is it was fine all fall and most of the winter. The ground finally froze 3 weeks ago here and now this happens. Any thoughts?
Edited 2/22/2007 3:33 pm ET by AllTrade
Replies
Do You have a continous footing all the way across the garage openings or just a pad where the 40" wall is?
Yes ,footing and frost wall are continuos
Looks like it's time for your GC or foundation specialty contractor to call his insurance company.
SamT
Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either. [Einstein] Tks, BossHogg.
Ok not as bad as I thought. We will be fixing the floor and addressing the foundation drains to fix the problem. Water got under the slab froze and the floor heaved up raising the posts with it. So from now on we will always set our posts before the slab. Floor would have cracked but the posts would have stayed put.