khansen46
Member
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2010
- Messages
- 19
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- 2
My wife and I just found as close to the perfect house as we think we will find for ourselves. It is everything we have been looking for, and we really want to purchase it. However, it has what I believe to be some minor foundation issues. The piers and footers on one side are leaning a bit, and it has affected the exterior door above this area, and the front door.
I crawled up under the house yesterday, and checked it out as well as I could. There is plenty of room to crawl under, and lots of light.
The foundation is made up of what I believe is poured concrete footers, and the piers are made of brick and were cemented to the footers. I don't see any damage at all to the underside of the house (aside from the insulation being pulled away, which I believe was done by local critters), and think this can be corrected pretty easily. I don't have experience with leveling houses, but I did work in the construction field in my 20s (20+ years ago) and did remodeling and additions. I'm still pretty handy, and am game to try anything once.
My question is this: Once I have raised the house off each pier (one at a time, of course), can I level the pier/footer assembly, trench out another 4" - 8" around the perimeter, and pour another footer around the existing one? Or am I better off just removing it all and pouring new footers and starting from scratch? I'm not too concerned with the appearance aspect of it, as we will ultimately put some sort of skirting arount it or block it up. However, I really don't want to have to do it all over again in another 5-10 years or so.
The house was built in 1984, and is in the country south of Houston. There don't appear to be any drainage issues, so I don't know what caused this to begin with. Since the house is bank-owned, we aren't able to get the history of the house. It does appear, however, that this has been a problem for a while, as some of the interior doors have been shaved at the top so they would close.
This will be our first and last house, so I don't mind putting in the work. I just want to make sure I make good decisions and fix it right. I'd sure appreciate any input. I also have a lot more pictures if that helps.
Ken
I crawled up under the house yesterday, and checked it out as well as I could. There is plenty of room to crawl under, and lots of light.
The foundation is made up of what I believe is poured concrete footers, and the piers are made of brick and were cemented to the footers. I don't see any damage at all to the underside of the house (aside from the insulation being pulled away, which I believe was done by local critters), and think this can be corrected pretty easily. I don't have experience with leveling houses, but I did work in the construction field in my 20s (20+ years ago) and did remodeling and additions. I'm still pretty handy, and am game to try anything once.
My question is this: Once I have raised the house off each pier (one at a time, of course), can I level the pier/footer assembly, trench out another 4" - 8" around the perimeter, and pour another footer around the existing one? Or am I better off just removing it all and pouring new footers and starting from scratch? I'm not too concerned with the appearance aspect of it, as we will ultimately put some sort of skirting arount it or block it up. However, I really don't want to have to do it all over again in another 5-10 years or so.
The house was built in 1984, and is in the country south of Houston. There don't appear to be any drainage issues, so I don't know what caused this to begin with. Since the house is bank-owned, we aren't able to get the history of the house. It does appear, however, that this has been a problem for a while, as some of the interior doors have been shaved at the top so they would close.
This will be our first and last house, so I don't mind putting in the work. I just want to make sure I make good decisions and fix it right. I'd sure appreciate any input. I also have a lot more pictures if that helps.
Ken