Hi !
I’m in the process of rebuilding a 3-bay, 2-story plus half-basement, 34X 28′, 100 year-old garage from the ground up. Talk about scope creep: What began as a roof replacement resulted in demolishing the whole structure. It now appears that the foundation needs such significant repair that it will be better to just replace what is there. What is there:
1. The garage is 34’w X 28′ d. The garage doors / driveway are (were) located on the on the “south wall”. The garage floor has two sections: the south half of the garage is bit. asphalt, the north half was wood deck over a 8′ dirt basement floor. This means that in section, the garage is three stories at the back (north) half and two stories at the front (south) half.
2. The “south” foundation wall is a 34′ frost wall where the cars come in and out.
3. At the “southeast” and “southwest” corners, and extending northward 14′ there is no apparent foundation. It looks like a bed of concrete was poured and while still wet a 4X4 was laid in it as a sill plate – most has rotted away.
4. The “north” foundation wall, and foundation foundation wall extending 14′ “southward” from the “northeast” corner is old CMU resting on a footing of questionable condition and topped with a brick cap.
5. There is a very sturdy stone foundation wall that extends along the “long” centerline of the building. This wall supports the asphalt pad from falling into the garage basement. It appears to be in excellent, uncompromised condition but may need the pointing touched up in places.
6. I plan to replace the north, south, east and west foundation walls and leave the existing stone foundation wall that supports the center of the building and the asphalt pad. I plan to replace the asphalt pad with 4000 psi concrete.
The questions I have are:
1. Replacing the stone would be a mess and extremely expensive. Instead, can I re-use the stone wall to support the centerline / gable ends of the new garage?
2. If I can re-use the existing stone wall, the east and west walls will somehow need to tie into the existing stone foundation at their mid-point. Otherwise, the stone wall will need to be made shorter somehow, or, the whole structure would have to get wider, which isn’t possible because of other site constraints.
We’re calling this project the Garage-Mahal!
Someone said there was a recent FH article about this subject, but I can’t seem to locate it.
Any thoughts you might have are EXTREMELY appreciated!