My current house is about 90 years old and I would like to redo the drain tile and damp proof the foundation wall.
The foundation wall for the house is rectangular with a porch coming off the front of the house. Above the porch is a 2nd level enclosed porch. Both porches rest on a couple brick piers and a stone wall that runs under the front of the porch. This stone wall and the porch make it quite difficult to excavate the front foundation wall as it fall under the porch which is about 4 feet off the ground.
What would you recommend? Should I excavate around the porch and run the drain tile there? or excavate under the porch near the front foundation wall and run the drain tile there? If I excavate around the front porch then I could install drain board to the bottom of the stone wall and run it down to the bottom of the drain tile trench to hopefully prevent water from moving into the soil under the porch and against the foundation wall. In this case the front foundation wall would also not receive a damp proofing so I would be depending on the drain board to prevent water from reaching it.
Ideally I would underpin and then form a concrete foundation under the porch foundation and either incorporate that area into the house or keep it as an unconditioned outside shed but that is really more work than I want to do or pay for.
Thanks for any advice!
learner
Replies
Greetings learner,
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
Thanks for the bump. Doesn't look like I am having much luck getting a response. Maybe I should have made my title more catchy.
Some might do that in the Tavern but for a meat and potatos post labeling the content of the thread is usually the best.
Snout porch. That's the second new term I've learned on BT this morning along with 'bailiwick'.
'Course you already know that...This post, in response to your question, will bump the thread through the 'recent discussion' listing again which will increase it's viewing.
and Cheers View Image
Edited 10/24/2007 10:27 am ET by rez
Let's run this thru again.
bump
Well we tried.
Yes we did. Thank you for the bounces anyway!
Pacific Northwest.
I take that to mean you have a pretty good amount of rainfall which translates into a 90 yearold foundation presenting a fairly humid environment in the crawl space? Or do you have a basement?
Sorry for the late reply I was on vacation. Yeah a lot of rainfall. The house is quite old and requires a lot of attention so getting around to fixing everything is a 1000 list operation. I still need to fix the gutters which have trees growing out of them. The house has a basement with a 1/2" thick slab over 2/3 of the basement and the other 1/3 is a maybe 1/8" thick slab over non-mortared brick. The wall is poured concrete but with large basketball sized rocks in it. It was painted but portions of the pain are flacking off with eflorescence in them.The eventual plan is to underpin the foundation wall and after that is completed I'd redo the drain tile as the foundation would now be lower than it is currently and the drain tile would be at the wrong level. The porch foot print is outside of the foundation footprint hence my question on how to handle it. learner
So what is happening? Is there water entering the basement?
Actually no there is no water entering the basement - that would be quite bad. It is just generally musty smelling and I would imagine the concrete walls have wicked up a fair amount of moisture.When I drop the floor a few feet tho, I should likely put in new drain tiles while I am waterproofing the outside portion of the under pin.