Do-it-yourself village house foundation repair

Repairing the foundation is a costly and complex undertaking, in order to perform it correctly, you need to know the principle of the device, the causes and signs of the destruction of the foundation. A wooden private house is very common in our area, which is not surprising, because wood is an affordable material, construction costs are relatively low, and the built house will be environmentally friendly and warm. These are the undoubted advantages of a wooden structure. There are also disadvantages, but they do not appear immediately, but after some time of operation.

Repair of the foundation of a wooden house

Most often, the owners of wooden houses are faced with the fact that the house is "bursting at the seams." Windows and doors are warped, walls sag, cracks appear. All these visual defects are caused by one reason - the destruction of the foundation. To extend the life of the house, it is necessary to eliminate this destruction in a timely manner. This will require strengthening or reconstruction of the foundation (restoration), complete (overhaul) or partial (elimination of cracks).

It should be noted that repairing the foundation of an old wooden house is not an easy undertaking, so it is advisable to entrust it to professionals. But, you can do the work yourself. The main thing here is the time factor. The problem should be fixed as soon as it is found.

Before proceeding with a detailed study of how to repair the foundation of a wooden house, you need to figure out what caused its deformation. This can be facilitated by two factors:

change in the bearing capacity of the soil. This is due to an increase in the load on the foundation, and therefore on the ground below it. This can be caused by improper drainage of rain / melt water or an increase in the water table, which leads to soil erosion. Erecting other structures next to the house also increases the load on the soil. As a result, the soil, as it were, is squeezed out from under the foundation of the house, which ultimately can lead to subsidence of the house or its distortion.

loss of strength of the material from which the foundation is made. Among the main reasons are the following: the wrong choice of the type of foundation, the effect of water, the wrong grade of concrete, which was used during construction, the wrong calculation of the depth of soil freezing, violation of the technology of the device.

Identifying the cause of foundation failure provides a starting point for research.

The second point that needs to be taken into account is the identification of the degree of damage to the foundation. According to the criterion of maintainability, they can be conditionally divided into 4 types.

These include the partially exfoliated finishing of the foundation of a wooden house. Such defects do not significantly affect the bearing capacity of the foundation. In addition, they are visible to the naked eye and can be removed without too much trouble.

These include the appearance of cracks in the foundation of the house due to subsidence or destruction of the foundation. In this case, you should be more careful, because crack crack strife. First of all, its direction is determined. As a rule, horizontal cracks in the foundation are the least dangerous, but vertical or zigzag cracks should alert you. It will also be found out whether the subsidence of the foundation is temporary or it is progressive.

The nature of the destruction can be determined with the help of beacons installed on the crack (see photo).

Plain paper can be used as beacons, but it is worth remembering that when moisture gets in, the paper gets soaked and will no longer give a complete picture of the behavior of the crack. Plaster plasters are suitable for use. But the easiest way is to put some putty on the wall and draw a straight line on it with a spatula and make a mark. Such a beacon is good because it breaks at the slightest movement of the surface. The installation of a beacon will allow not only to notice the increase in the crack, but to determine the rate of destruction.

With the temporary subsidence of the foundation, the lighthouses will remain motionless. That is, there is a high probability that the soil under the foundation has moved a little, took its place and does not intend to move any more. Therefore, it is only necessary to carry out routine repair of cracks in the foundation.

• expand the crack;
• clean it from falling parts and dust;
• treat with a primer;
• seal the seam with a special mixture or cement mortar.

The destruction of the lighthouses indicates that the fault in the foundation or wall is increasing. This means that sealing cracks will not help, it is time to take urgent measures - this type of deformation can be classified as catastrophic.

These are foundation defects that can lead to the destruction of the house. Of course, it is advisable to repair the foundation under a wooden house on time, but there are times when the moment is missed.

Then the technology for carrying out repair work will be determined by the type of foundation. The most popular of which are columnar and tape. In each individual case, each owner decides for himself whether he needs to strengthen the foundation or replace it completely.

In this case, the state of the foundation is so deplorable that there is nothing to repair. It is usually easier and cheaper to destroy an old house and build a new cottage in its place that meets all the requirements of a modern person.

Repair of the strip foundation of a wooden house is somewhat more complicated, so we will dwell on it in more detail.

The method of strengthening is chosen when the deformations of the foundation are eliminated, and the soil under its cushion is stable. Or if there is a need for an add-on to the house, and the existing foundation cannot cope with the increasing load.

• dig a trench around the perimeter of the foundation. Its width should be sufficient for comfortable work and take into account the fact that the thickness of the foundation will increase;

• clean the surface of the foundation from soil;

• drill holes. Its diameter should exceed the diameter of the reinforcement by 1 mm. This is necessary for a more dense installation of metal rods;

• hammer the fittings into the holes. Thus, the new foundation will be reliably linked to the existing one;

• make a reinforced belt. For this, reinforcement is welded to the installed pieces;

• formwork is installed;

• concrete is poured. After the concrete hardens, the formwork is removed, and the reinforced foundation stands for several more days;

• waterproofing of the new foundation is being carried out;

• a blind area is made, which will allow water to be diverted from the foundation.

Strengthening the foundation of a wooden house allows you to redistribute the load of the building over a large area. As a result of this, the foundation will stop subsiding or collapsing.

Often the foundation sags so much that water can flow into the room without hindrance. In this case, you need to figure out how to raise the foundation of a wooden house? Or the old foundation can no longer cope with the load falling on it and then the foundation is reconstructed.

• maximum reduction of constant and variable load on the foundation. For this, everything that can be taken out of the house is taken out, it is even desirable to dismantle the floor and disassemble the stoves. The exception is furnaces on a separately poured foundation. Naturally, tenants are also evicted during the renovation;

• load calculation (house weight).The weight is easy to determine, having at your disposal data on the density of the wood from which the house is built and the total cubic capacity of the wood used. Cubic capacity is calculated based on the dimensions of the house and the thickness of the walls;

• the choice of a jack for raising the house. Depends on the weight of the structure, the lifting capacity of the jack and their number;

• digging pits (trenches). It breaks out around the entire perimeter of the house or only in those places where the house needs to be raised. Its presence simplifies access to the foundation. In addition, the appearance of water in the pit will make it possible to understand the level of occurrence of groundwater;

• establishment of a jack. To raise the house smoothly, the jack must be properly installed. It is installed only in safe places, without destruction or damage;

• lifting the house. You need to lift the house carefully, slowly, and most importantly evenly;

Important: to lay the foundation for a wooden house, you need to raise the entire structure. Considering that the house is wooden, the maximum load will fall on the lower rims. To prevent them from sagging, you need to pull off the lower crown with a steel hoop or fill the boards.

• dismantling of the old foundation. If the budget is very limited, and the condition of some parts of the foundation is satisfactory, then a partial disassembly can be performed, i.e. remove only the destroyed foundation. However, the cost of work will not decrease significantly from this, but the quality of work may suffer;

• installation of a sand-cement cushion for the future foundation. Despite the fact that the foundation is being laid for the finished house, the pillow is an important component of it;

• installation of concrete or brick supports in the corners of the house. Installation of piles is also possible. They will reduce the load on the foundation in the future. The height of the support is equal to the height of the new foundation;

• reinforcement. After the columns are installed, the fittings are installed. The reinforcement belt will give the foundation strength. We remind you that his device of an armored belt for the foundation is carried out using wire, not welding;

• installation of formwork;

• pouring concrete. The foundation must stand for several days to gain strength. After that, the formwork is removed, and the foundation is left open for another 1-2 days;

• waterproofing. To protect the wood of the house from decay, a layer of waterproofing should be laid on the foundation. Roofing material is excellent for these purposes;

• lowering the house. The house is sinking as slowly as it was rising;

• Finishing work. This includes complete waterproofing, cladding, drainage and blind areas.

It can be seen from the description that replacing the foundation under a wooden house is a rather risky and time-consuming undertaking, for the implementation of which it is advisable to invite specialists.

How to raise a house and move it to a new foundation in practice can be seen in the video

Using the methods described above, you can repair the strip foundation of a wooden house. But what about those who have a columnar foundation?

• the house rises to the calculated height. The height should be sufficient for carrying out work and at the same time did not contribute to a strong sagging of the lower rim.

• the bent pillars are dismantled. It is worth noting that the dilapidated pillar-support must be removed, and the tilted one is simply leveled.

• soil is selected at the place of installation of new pillars. We remind you that the pillars are installed at the corners of the building and at the junction / intersection of the walls.

• a sand-cement pillow is arranged under the post.

• the column is reinforced.

• concrete is poured.

• installation of steel or wooden beams is carried out, which take on all the load from the weight of the house and transfer it to the poles.

• the structure is lowered.

If you need to replace one or two posts, you can do it as follows. In the place where the post is installed, which must be replaced, a tunnel is made. The tilt angle is 35 °. A pipe is inserted into it and filled with a solution. After hardening, the old post is removed, and the new one is leveled.The process is shown more clearly in the photo.

It is worth noting that the repair or complete replacement of the pile foundation is much easier and faster than the strip foundation and takes only a few days, after which you can operate the house as usual.

In times of total scarcity, i.e. during the construction of the main part of the houses, the foundations were built of bricks (both tape and columnar). Due to its fragility, repairing the brick foundation of a wooden house usually involves replacing the brickwork with a more durable material - concrete. This reinforcement technology is applicable for a foundation made of rubble stone. The method was described on the forum "House and Dacha" and judging by the reviews, the technique has shown itself well in practice.

To carry out repair work, you will need

1. Concrete mortar.
2. Armature.
3. Corner for the manufacture of supports.
4. Jacks for lifting a house with a lifting capacity of 20 tons.

Dismantling the old rubble (or brick) foundation masonry Dismantle the old rubble foundation masonry (or brick) in small sections of half a meter.

The freed fragments at the base of the house are needed to install the jack and further transfer the weight of the house to the metal supports.

Thus, the foundation under the wooden house is replaced.

After reading this article, you got an idea of ​​how to repair a damaged foundation, how to strengthen the foundation of a wooden house, and in which cases it must be completely replaced. Using this information, you will gain sufficient knowledge to do the work yourself.

The purpose of the purchase is to maintain a subsidiary farm, without permanent residence, and barbecue on weekends and holidays, so they did not pay much attention to the technical condition of the house, there are walls, a roof, and that's good.

To make it possible to spend the night in the house on weekends, we made a small redecoration in the country style, with the maximum interspersing of antiques in the interior. The stove was repaired, which had been converted from wood heating to gas heating, the electrics were replaced, and a weir system was installed on the roof. They also put things in order around the house. As they could, we made the landscape design of the site so popular today, installed a greenhouse in which we grow a rich harvest of vegetables.

The cement cracked, the rubble stone fell out of the masonry in some places, the brick that was used to cover the basement fell to pieces.

This happened due to the fact that at the time the foundation was not waterproofed. There was no drain on the roof, so rain and snow had an adverse effect on the base of the house all year round. The water, breaking the masonry to the crack, froze there in the cold season, and the ice made the cracks even wider.

The impression was that the repair of the foundation in such a neglected state was impossible. But as the proverb says, the eyes are afraid, but the hands are doing. An important impetus in this story was that we did not plan to demolish the house. There is a desire to make an extension to it, but there were no thoughts to completely break it.

The first step was to dismantle the basement of the house, made of red brick. They did not throw out the building material, but made a retaining wall out of it and folded the legs for the bench.

With the help of a perforator, they beat off loose rubble stones and cement ledges, widened the cracks, took out all the pieces of brick that did not hold well from the foundation.

As a result, there is only that which is still holding on tightly. The dust was brushed to the ground with a broom, and the garbage was taken to a nearby ditch.

Since we planned to fill the basement with cement mortar, we had to use a chainsaw to cut off 20 cm of strips with which the walls of the house were upholstered so that they would not interfere with work in the future.

The lower rims of the log house, which have become visible, will be treated with used engine oil, protecting them from moisture and the effects of grinder bugs.

We will dig a small trench along the foundation, as deep as a shovel's bayonet, and 20 cm wide. The earth can be taken out to the garden, or, if there is a lot of garbage in it, thrown away. It is not necessary to dig a trench deeper and wider, since there will be no load on this part of the foundation.

In order for the cement mortar to stay on the old foundation, it must be reinforced with corrugated reinforcement. We cut pieces of reinforcement with a diameter of 12 mm, a length of 60 cm and drive them next to the base to a depth of 30 cm every 50 cm from each other.

Now we cut off the reinforcement rod along the length of the wall, place it below ground level so that it lies in the trench, and tie it to the vertical posts with a knitting wire.

Prepare a cement mortar consisting of one part of cement, three parts of sand and three parts of rubble, stir everything with water and pour it into a trench.

Again, take long rods of reinforcement and tie them to vertical posts at a height of 15-20 cm from the ground. In the large slots of the foundation, we will roll short pieces and tie them with wire. On such a structure, the solution will hold tightly.

It's time to set up the formwork. We will make it from boards 10 cm wide, 2 cm thick. The height of the basement will be 45 cm, so we need to make shields from 5 gaps by joining them to each other. We will connect the boards to each other with self-tapping screws, screwing short bars perpendicular to them every 1 m from each other. We make the length of the shields along the length of the foundation. We wrap the inside of the board with PVC foil so that the boards do not get dirty with cement mortar and can be used in the future.

We will fix the formwork with pegs. This is done like this: stepping back 10 cm from the base, we install the shield. At a distance of 50 cm from the shield, a peg is driven into the ground, it is connected with a vertical bar on the shield with a plate from below, the shield is aligned vertically and connected from above with another bar with a peg. The more often you drive stakes into the ground, the stronger the formwork shield will hold.

In the same way, we strengthen the formwork around the entire perimeter of the house, connecting the shields to each other with self-tapping screws.

At the end of the house, there is a ventilation hole in the basement through which air enters under the wooden floors. Let's make a cutout in this place of the formwork to fit the size of the plastic pipe.

So that the foundation is poured at the same height, using the hydro level, we determine the highest point of the old foundation and draw a horizontal line on the walls. With the help of a square, we will transfer it to the inner part of the formwork and stretch the fishing line along all the boards. This will be our level at which we will pour the solution.

In the old bath, stir the cement mortar thinner and fill it inside the formwork so that it fills all the cracks in the foundation.

If the solution turns out to be higher than the line that we pulled, we will level it with a trowel. This will fill the entire formwork. So that the rainwater does not linger on the plinth, we will make a slight slope towards the blind area. Let the grout dry. After 3 days, the formwork can be disassembled.

This completes the repair of the foundation. Unevenness of the plinth can be plastered. When the solution is completely dry, the foundation can be pasted over with decorative tiles or sheathed with siding.

Violation of the integrity of a dilapidated structure over time is a natural phenomenon. Old wooden houses are especially susceptible to this fate. The cause of skewed doors and windows, cracks in the walls is the destruction of the foundation. Timely elimination of the factors that led to the deformation of the supporting structure and the tree itself will extend the life of the housing. We will consider in detail how to repair the foundation of a wooden house. Depending on the degree of changes, partial or complete reconstruction of the base is carried out. In some cases, a full replacement of the old foundation is required.

The development of a plan for the repair of the foundation is preceded by the identification of the reasons for the violation of its integrity.There are several factors that provoked the deformation:

• Increasing the load on the foundation. For example, the attic was completed or the cladding of an old wooden building was made.
• A rise in the level of groundwater or an illiterately equipped runoff of rainwater, as a result of which the soil was eroded.
• Construction of other objects near the old wooden house that increase the load on the ground.

Such situations change the bearing capacity of the soil, which leads to a distortion of the structure or its subsidence. Repairing the foundations of an old wooden house may be required as a result of the loss of strength of the base material itself. This is due to:

• the wrong choice of the type of foundation;
• incorrect proportions of mortar or inappropriate grade of concrete;
• violations of the technological process when laying;
• incorrectly determined level of soil freezing;
• unforeseen exposure to water.

Correctly identifying the source of the problem is the starting point for planning the repair process. An assessment of the condition of the support and identification of weak points will determine whether a partial restoration or a full-scale restoration of the base is necessary.

The degree of deformation of the support of the old house directly affects the content of the renovation plan. Defects are conventionally divided into four levels. Partially detached finish refers to the minimum deviations and does not have a tangible effect on the bearing performance of the base. This defect is visible without deep analysis and can be eliminated without difficulty.

Extended repair of the foundation of a wooden house is required in the presence of cracks that appeared as a result of subsidence of the support or destructive processes in it. The following points deserve attention:

• The direction of the crack is determined. Horizontal slots are less hazardous.
• A vertical or zigzag fault is a serious defect that requires an early foundation repair.
• What is the nature of the subsidence of the base under the old wooden housing: temporary or progressive.

The function of beacons will be performed by ordinary paper strips, in this case, in order to obtain a reliable picture, they should be avoided getting wet. Plaster plasters will also help. The most reliable way to make beacons is to apply a small amount of putty to the wall and mark a straight line. With a slight fluctuation, such a beacon will break. This technique allows you to fix the increase in the crack and find out the rate of development of defects.

The subsidence of the foundation under the wooden housing was temporary, if the lighthouses were not damaged and remained motionless. This happens with a single ground movement under the support of an old house. The repair of the foundation will only consist in the elimination of the existing cracks. The repair process includes the following steps:

• jointing a fault;
• cleaning the gap from falling out fragments and dust;
• processing with a primer;
• sealing joints with cement mortar or a special compound.

The collapse of the beacons signals progressive faults at the base of the old wooden dwelling. Therefore, repairs to eliminate cracks will not be enough. This type of deformation is characterized as catastrophic and requiring urgent action.

Serious defects can provoke the destruction of an old wooden dwelling. The repair plan depends on the type of support structure; the tape and columnar options are more common. In some cases, it is impractical to reinforce the base; it is better to completely change the foundation for a standing house. If it is not possible to eliminate the deformations, the dwelling is subject to demolition.

The foundation under a wooden house can be strengthened if its defects are removable and the soil is stable.

How to strengthen the foundation for an old wooden house, consider in detail:

• Prepare a trench along the perimeter of the base, allowing you to pour the foundation in the future.
• The old surface of the base of a wooden house is cleared of the ground.
• The repair begins with drilling holes with a diameter exceeding the size of the reinforcement by 1 mm.
• The reinforcement hammered into the holes serves as a link between the old support structure and the additional new one.
• The next step in the repair is the formation of a reinforced belt. Welding is used only at a few points, most of the strapping is made with wire. Such fixation will exclude deformation of the reinforced belt during the pouring and hardening of concrete mortar.
• Do-it-yourself repair of the supporting structure of a wooden house by installing formwork continues.
• At the final stage of the renovation, concrete is poured to strengthen the old foundation. After it has solidified, the formwork is removed, and the new foundation is settled for some time, depending on the temperature and humidity level.
• High-quality repair of the base of an old wooden dwelling provides for waterproofing the new foundation and the formation of a blind area for water drainage.

Strengthening the supporting structure helps to redistribute the load of the old structure over a large area.

The following video will demonstrate how to pour a rubble stone foundation: