Continuous footing placement

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simonsx5

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Hi all. I am looking for advise on continuous footing. Just general advise on what things are considered when deciding where to place a continuous footing vs just putting individual supports.
My home is really unleveled and I am pretty sure that the continuous footings being around the perimeter of home and porches combined is the culprit. My home is 1487 sq ft with both a front and back porch built on about 10 years ago.

I am wondering now if we should add continuous footings to support the front and rear wall of the home to help with the level issue. See a few pictures below. The first is front of home and 2nd is under the home where the front of main home is facing front porch. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Repair1508721310.741802.jpgView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Repair1508721352.333283.jpg
 
You have what looks like a footing. That would be the concrete in the ground. You would have to check and see how thick it is between the piers. Your house was built on beams and if they are sagged i9t will take some time to get them back up to level. All you would really need it to lift the center of the beam and put another pier at the center point. You would have to be very patient, as it will seem to take for ever to straighten the beams with out lifting them off the other piers.
 
The short piece of PT 6x6 in the bottom picture looks newer than the rest. What is its purpose?
 
That 1st step is a thriller.

Interesting! Usually found in the Mississippi flood plain.

Depending upon what and where the "out of level" is, can determine the coarse of corrective action, from jacking and dry packing to a lift and level by a house mover.
 
You have what looks like a footing. That would be the concrete in the ground. You would have to check and see how thick it is between the piers. Your house was built on beams and if they are sagged i9t will take some time to get them back up to level. All you would really need it to lift the center of the beam and put another pier at the center point. You would have to be very patient, as it will seem to take for ever to straighten the beams with out lifting them off the other piers.


Thank you for responding. I understood the first 2 sentences and not another thing. I am a travel agent. I will have to google the info included in your suggestions and will respond once I learn what the i9t is and how in the world they would “get back up to level”. Does this mean that something will be moving UP from its current position? I am throwing in the towel if things are going to go up.
 
I apologize for the duplicate response. Ap crashed and didn’t show it had posted and I can’t figure out how to delete 😬
 
The short piece of PT 6x6 in the bottom picture looks newer than the rest. What is its purpose?


It was something the contractor used during my home elevation. He explained to me it’s purpose but I honestly wasn’t paying close attention and have forgotten.
 
If your contractor made all the piers level and you have an uneven floor the timbers have sagged in the middle. Sagging can take years, lifting them back to straight will take a lot of time.
If you have lifted for flood problems I would leave it open. Something to keep critters out.
 
What the goal is here is to find out if the continuous footing placed around the porches (non load bearing... I think) instead of the main home (load bearing portions) has anything to do with the uneven floors and problems. We are honestly having to measure doors to be installed at angles to make them straight. That’s how bad it is.

I have attached inspectors report to try to make it easier to understand. I have had 2 structural engineers reports and CANNOT afford to pay anyone to do anything else to the foundation portion. We have already exceeded insurance amount given for elevation by almost 20,000 and that came from the money to put the inside of my home back together. I have to be able to fix this on my own. Sorry to be a pain in the a$&, just helps to know the situation I think. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Repair1508794135.496715.jpgView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Repair1508794147.941522.jpgView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Repair1508794158.961635.jpgView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Repair1508794166.020079.jpgView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Repair1508794173.684845.jpgView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Repair1508794180.484599.jpgView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Repair1508794186.984650.jpg
 
Not being "level" means one end of the house is higher or lower than the other. Is this the case? How much ?

Or possibly you mean the floors are not "flat". i.e possibly a sag in the middle, or possibly wavy. Is this the case ?

Edit --- sorry, did not see the post with the inspector's report.
 
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If your contractor made all the piers level and you have an uneven floor the timbers have sagged in the middle. Sagging can take years, lifting them back to straight will take a lot of time.
If you have lifted for flood problems I would leave it open. Something to keep critters out.


Apparently my property was lower on one side of home vs other, so piers were said to have been leveled based on the slope of the ground. When I look at it, it appears that ALL of the piers on the perimeter of my home are way higher than the piers under my home. The piers around the porches consist of 7 CMU’s (8x16 I think) stacked. The piers under my home are 5 CMU’s stacked.
 
I can't see how having a continuous footing on the perimeter (vs individual footings) would have contributed to the lack of flatness. The continuous footing should be more stable because it distributes the load over a greater area.
 
Apparently my property was lower on one side of home vs other, so piers were said to have been leveled based on the slope of the ground. When I look at it, it appears that ALL of the piers on the perimeter of my home are way higher than the piers under my home. The piers around the porches consist of 7 CMU’s (8x16 I think) stacked. The piers under my home are 5 CMU’s stacked.

That is good report. I don't think you need ans continues foundation but it should be leveled.

What you would do is jack up near a pier or both sides of a pier and raise or lower the pier. You would do that to all the piers that need to be adjusted.

It is nice that they gave you all the levels< would get a laser level and prove that for myself.

I would start by drafting a plan of the house including the placement of all the piers.
You would decide which is easiest, lower them tell they are all the same.
Or raise the low ones until the are all the same or a combination of both.

If the house was built on bad soil. this might be an ongoing problem. If that is the case then you would need to put bigger footing under the piers to fix that.

He mentioned that you had a join in a beam between two piers. that should never happen but there might be little load which might make it ok.
The real fix would be to add another pier.
 
I can't see how having a continuous footing on the perimeter (vs individual footings) would have contributed to the lack of flatness. The continuous footing should be more stable because it distributes the load over a greater area.

I guess that information is what I was looking for. I would have assumed that if there is not continuous footing under the “load bearing” portions of the home, that it would not serve a real purpose because essentially it’s not holding any weight of the home.

So that is what lead me to believe that the continuous footing may have been the culprit. If 2 of the 4 walls of the home (2 sides of house) are supported on the CT obviously those two walls are distributing the weight as intended. However... if the other 2 (front and back wall of home) do not have CF, than the loads carried by said walls would essentially be relying on the individual footings they were built on which could settle differently based on the soil under the pier.

In the inspectors report, he mentions rotted wood joist, and problems with sills etc. We have replaced all rotten, scabbed on, over notched joists and anything else (except a rim joist that back porch was attached to, because I haven’t figured out a way to do yet) we have replaced most of those things but still not right.

Again, maybe I should stop trying to figure it out. I just have to be able to move back home for Christmas. My husband and 3 boys have been living with my mother in law since August of 2016. DO YOU UNDERSTAND MY DESPERATION!!! &#128522;. So maybe I should stop trying to figure out how to fix something that may just correct itself with time. I don’t know.
 
You've been offered the method to remedy the condition and despite your frustration, as well as the financial burden, until you are capable of addressing them, they'll just be a necessary annoyance.
 
The way I see it, if the house was level before they raised it and it is not level now, then you have a case with the contractor. Unless there was an unknown problem, like the insect damage, he should take some responsibility for the problem.
Sometimes (just sometimes) the insurance company will come to your aid in enforcing faulty work.
 

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