sagging walls, crooked floors, bad foundation

[megotatractor]

the main house built 1900 is a 1 3/4 story approx 25'x35' with stone foundation over a crawl space and root cellar in one corner. the corner with the cellar has not settled as much as the rest of the house so the kitchen floor is extremely slanted. then about 1985 some moron brought in a 18'x30' office section -converted to a living room -and parked it next to the original house with the eaves just butted against the house. it is set on posts and beams. then stupid build a new roof over the original roof to eliminate where the original would have sloped towards the house. now the beams underneath were positioned like a trailer house at 1/3 point but the building was origninally on some kind of foundation. So with the weight of two compete roofs the walls have no support other than the floor and have settled a good 4" at the side walls causing the floor to bow up in the middle. makes for drunken walking sometimes. so i'm looking at trenching along those outer walls and building some sort of footing to support the walls. once jacked up level no doubt this is going to disturb the siding and roof (can't think what it's called, the metal the runs along the wall where the addition roof meets). but since the original house has a foundation that is no longer true perhaps Im' considering just trashing the "addition" and having the house jacke up and moved onto a new basement. whatcha think?

 

[MossRoad]

Is the cost of that work cheaper than building a new reproduction of the original house on a real basement?

 

[Rob_H]

This sounds a bit like our place when we got it - though not with the addition problem. You can shore up / replace the foundation in the main house fairly simply. We had the mason come in, jack the house a little (1/2") off the crumbling stone foundation - at which point it collapsed into the basement. Then they dug down a little, poured a concrete footing, built a block wall and moved the granite cap stones back into place. Took about a week, and $2,700 for one 28' foundation wall - we found that masons work cheap in January. In our case it was a little easier since the house is a timber frame / post and beam structure - you can get away with a lot more with this type of structure vs. stick framed.

Personally, I would trash the addition - it doesn't sound like it was well built to begin with. Then take a look at what you can do to get the main house closer to level - or at least flat. If you want an addition, have them pour the new foundation so it buttresses the old. They can tie them together with steel and concrete to make one big foundation wall.

I would also recommend the book Renovating Old Houses by George Nash - very realistic look at what you can do, and includes a chapter on foundation repair / replacement, and the issues with a rubble / stone foundation. It's on Amazon.

Best of luck.

Rob H.

 

[riptides]

Your story sounds all to familiar, we are going through a similar situation.

Our 1900-1920-1930-1970 farm house has the same issue with additions. We ended up signing with a structural engineering firm and a builder who will work us through the demolition/renovation process. The old farm house is sound, but our additions to it are not. We are removing them, roughly 1/2 the house, and will have them rebuilt.

Some of my builder friends have recommended a complete tear down and just a new house built in its place. But we really have a history issue with the farm house. So we will suck it up and tie the structures together under one roof.

One thing is for sure, you learn a lot, and will have something special at the end of your project.

Good luck.
-Mike Z.

 

[megotatractor]

Thanks for input. in the "woulda-shoulda-coulda" category I now regret trying to renovate. But after spending the bucks to aquire the property I couldn't see making the larger mortgage payments at the time to build a new house. so here we are in the original Money pit.. Anybody know a cheap contractor/mason in my area?