This has probably been addressed before, but I am looking at a fixer upper house that is aproximatly 1200sf. The basement has about 2inches of water in it ( the gutters are bad and will be replaced). The both Block walls on the longer sides of the house are bowing in and will need to be stablized or straightend out. i know there are several ways to fix this but what some of you here recomend? I am thinking about doing the Thrasher anchoring system. Has anybody done this before? My big issue is the cost using this method. Does anybody have a ballpark figure on this? I would guess about 50LF will need to be secured between the two walls.
Another option my engineer told me was to brace it with a 2x6 wall. Do this by anchoring a sill plate to the concrete and bolt the top plate to the exposed rafters. He said this would stop it from bowing more, but obviously wouldnt fix the problem. Then i could sheetrock over that to cover it up
the next thing would be to waterproof the basement. What would my options here be? Im not planing on finishing the basement, but want to solve the problem as cheap as possible. I have a price in mind for this house, but whatever its going to cost to fix this basement problem is going to have to be deducted from the cost of the house
I have never tackled a problem like this but have talked to somebody that has. They ended up hiring a company to come in and do the anchor technique you are talking about. If I remember correct it was around $6,000 to fix it. I would get at least 2-3 quotes. Good luck and would love to hear how it turns out! :beer
As far as I know the quotes on jobs of this nature can vary WIDELY. Definitely take the advice above and get as many quotes as you can. I’ve seen some people reporting one company giving a $4k quote and another with a $10k quote for the same job.
This may sound stupid but hire a structural engineer to do an inspection of the house and give you estimates if they think work should be completed. The engineer will not do the work themselves so they will be completely honest with you. They will also inspect the whole house. It should only cost $250-$350. Example: I bought a house for my parents and the inspector said the basement wall was bowing and to get it fixed. I called a contractor out of the phone book. They came in and said it would cost $10,000. I talked to a few people and they said call a structural engineer. I did and he inspected the whole house. He said the bow was minor and not a load bearing wall. He said the bow was because they paved the driveway about 10 years ago and when they rolled it out it put minor pressure on the wall. So for $250 I saved $9750, learned a lot (he gave a lot of info during the inspection), and know the house me parents live in is structurally safe.
I talked to Thrasher and they said about $6,000 to put in an anchoring system. I went back over and took some pictures of it. After further inspection, i dont think i will need to do anything to it. There are some cracks that i would go through and grout, but i dont know if it really needs to be supported. Being a Civil Engineering Tech, i fortunatly have access to a Structural engineer that can look at it and not charge me anything and give me the advice i need. But that said, i looked at a house the other day that had the same problem, but worse on the bowing inward, and they had some 2"x2" angle iron holding the wall up. With all being said, this may be the way i go depending on what the engineer says. I will keep you all informed.
I’ve dealt with this several times. Yes, estimate can be all over the place. A structural engr is the right place to start.
As for water intrusion, there are several ways to deal with this. One of the “easiest” is to dig out the foundation and put 6mil plastic up against the foundation. Depending on the soil type, then you would need to back fill with sand, gravel and/or dirt mix to allow for good drainage deeper into the soil. In some cases, a foundation drain could be helpful as well depending on the situation (grade, soil type, etc).
Engineer told me to just grout it as the walls wernt bad enough to go to the more expensive extremes. Bad news is the realtor called me about an hour before i was going to submit the offer and told me that there was already 6 offers in and 4 being above the asking price. I snoozed on this one, but i wasnt going to go up another 10k on my offer to be competitive. For what i was going to do with the property, i woulda broke even at best. Hopefully find another here soon.