This is installment two of four on recent house projects.

Oddly enough, the return loop from the second floor that caused us to make a hole in the closet wall also generated a need for us to access the crawl space under the small addition. It had been closed up by the home owner, and despite repeated attempts to learn why, we couldn’t get it out of him. Well once we broke through his silence became immediately obvious. One of the foundation walls is caving in.

It appears there is a drainage problem and water is saturating the ground outside the wall freezing and unfreezing. This is causing too much pressure on the wall, which is causing it to push inward. Fortunately, this is a small addition, and it is the only thing support by this wall. It’s not like the house is in jeopardy, but it will probably run in the thousands to get it fixed. I plan to have a foundation contractor quote the repair this spring.

Update: We were able to find a contractor who was willing to repair the wall for us at a very reasonable rate. They dug out around the foundation by hand so we didn’t have a backhoe tear up our yard. I had them put rebar into the footing and it goes up to the grade. The columns that have the rebar were filled with mortar to re-enforce the wall. They used z-bar (horizontal rebar) between each layer of brick. They ended up replacing half of the back wall as well. On this wall they put a vent in to increase air flow and circulation in that part of the basement.

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