Rock foundation wall supporting concrete foundation wall repair
Rock foundation wall supporting concrete foundation wall repair
(OP)
A friend of mine wanted to know my opinion on a foundation failure he has on a property he recently bought. The structure is a 1880's era barn (was listed as the poor house on old tax maps) but is in amazing condition. Beautiful post and timber construction, no major sag in the roof, great example of the longevity of these kinds of buildings when maintained.
Unfortunately, we had a bad winter in New England last year and one of the foundation walls is blowing in. The foundation consists of a rock wall foundation with a more modern poured concrete wall on top. There's soil on the exterior of the wall plus a removed tree. The location is difficult to get to from the outside and right next to the property line. Excavating likely would require hand tools and a lot of labor, not the best option if it can be avoided.
Here's some pictures of the foundation showing the failure:
http://files.engineering.com/download.aspx?folder=63d344ca-5160-445f-8988-fd3a28fae51c&file=Rock_Wall_Foundation_Failure.pdf
What are your guys and gals thoughts on restraining this motion? So far the structure hasn't settled but obviously this wall is about to loose all of it's bearing capacity (if it hasn't already).
There is a poured concrete slab in the building and one of our thoughts was to erect a thrust block of sorts and put some steel channels and wood on the rock wall and use a hydraulic jack to push the foundation back to plumb. Once we get the wall back to plumb we could pour concrete into the existing rock wall to help resist any future motion. Another option would be to find any gaps in the wall and use a torpedo-style, wire rope soil anchor back to steel channels with some threaded rod and nuts. By slowly tightening the nuts we could pull the wall back to plumb and also provide additional restraint. Another idea would be to pour a concrete counterfort wall against the existing wall as deflected just to restraint further motion but neither of us like this for both structural and aesthetic reasons.
Thoughts?
Unfortunately, we had a bad winter in New England last year and one of the foundation walls is blowing in. The foundation consists of a rock wall foundation with a more modern poured concrete wall on top. There's soil on the exterior of the wall plus a removed tree. The location is difficult to get to from the outside and right next to the property line. Excavating likely would require hand tools and a lot of labor, not the best option if it can be avoided.
Here's some pictures of the foundation showing the failure:
http://files.engineering.com/download.aspx?folder=63d344ca-5160-445f-8988-fd3a28fae51c&file=Rock_Wall_Foundation_Failure.pdf
What are your guys and gals thoughts on restraining this motion? So far the structure hasn't settled but obviously this wall is about to loose all of it's bearing capacity (if it hasn't already).
There is a poured concrete slab in the building and one of our thoughts was to erect a thrust block of sorts and put some steel channels and wood on the rock wall and use a hydraulic jack to push the foundation back to plumb. Once we get the wall back to plumb we could pour concrete into the existing rock wall to help resist any future motion. Another option would be to find any gaps in the wall and use a torpedo-style, wire rope soil anchor back to steel channels with some threaded rod and nuts. By slowly tightening the nuts we could pull the wall back to plumb and also provide additional restraint. Another idea would be to pour a concrete counterfort wall against the existing wall as deflected just to restraint further motion but neither of us like this for both structural and aesthetic reasons.
Thoughts?
Maine Professional and Structural Engineer
American Concrete Industries
www.americanconcrete.com






RE: Rock foundation wall supporting concrete foundation wall repair
RE: Rock foundation wall supporting concrete foundation wall repair
Maine Professional and Structural Engineer
American Concrete Industries
www.americanconcrete.com
RE: Rock foundation wall supporting concrete foundation wall repair
As to frost heave, yes it goes in the direction of least resistance, many times pushing walls in.
RE: Rock foundation wall supporting concrete foundation wall repair
RE: Rock foundation wall supporting concrete foundation wall repair
Maine Professional and Structural Engineer
American Concrete Industries
www.americanconcrete.com
RE: Rock foundation wall supporting concrete foundation wall repair
To provide you with some info on horizontal frost heave I did a Google search for "horizontal frost heave"
Some of the results are:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0...
One of the referenced that came up has a lot of info. In this second one look into the text that shows up with key words highlighted.
Ground Freezing 1980: Selected Papers from the Second ...
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0444600590
Once you see evidence of horizontal frost heaving, you will be convinced, as I have been.
It just happens that most experiences people have are not where there is a vertical feature that shows the effect.
RE: Rock foundation wall supporting concrete foundation wall repair