Brick wall tilting and dragging connected roof beams 1

[drunkntigr]

Commercial building with brick wall on either side of shop front. roof is steel/timber construction with zinc panels.

Footings seemed to have sunk over time and now the wall appears to be tilting slightly at the top, causing cracking internally (refer picture) and appear to have caused leaks on the other side of the wall causing water to come in on the side through the roof.

Would permanent propping surfice for this? The pavement next to the tilting wall also seems to have sunk.

Not sure about the best way to rectify this, though it appears to be a demolish and rebuild possibly.

 

[SLTA]

How far is the out-of-plumbness? It looks to be a couple inches from the picture. At some point, the overall stability of the wall becomes questionable. Can you get inside to make sure that the roof framing still has proper bearing? And if the sidewalk outside has also sunk, you might want a geotech to look at the soils there. Shoring/propping won't do any good unless the soils below are stable.

 

[oldestguy]

In getting advice from geotech engineer, check that he (she) has experience with shrink-swell behavior of soils. Movement like this is common in such areas. If there are trees nearby, that is a clue that may explain things.

 

[TomDOT]

oldestguy - what "if"? - the tree is pretty prominent in 2 of the photos, adjacent to the tipping wall. I recall some fairly lengthy recent discussion on this forum about trees pumping water out of the soil, causing sinking.

 

[oldestguy]

Tom:

Interesting how I didn't see that! Concentrating on the wall view! Also old age. That shows something of not being distracted from the problem I guess. Right.

I probably commented on several such cases on rooms here. Let's see what the writer has to say about the area. As I recall the Canadian house problem, knowing where it was pretty much tells the probable reason.