Day 3: Emergency Foundation Repair

it's day three of our emergency foundation repair and Alex and Franky decided to divide and conquer while Alex focuses on correcting the grades outside of the building Frankie's got bigger problems still going on in the corner [Music] alex has a lot of work to do to cut the grades down enough to get all of the water to run away from the buildings [Music] the bath wall has been pushed out and straightened but this corner still needs a lot of work cause Corner is in such bad shape Frankie's got to get this put back together before it can be backfilled and Alex is already working on getting those grates fixed Frankie wants to get this done and fast you're good all this one's all opened up to ya he's gonna clean up that piece of stucco and save it for later we're working on over here Frankie try to push this bottom block in so we can corporal it then she'll stay hopefully yeah this block is on the bottom and in the very corner just in a spot where our heavy equipment can't reach but Frankie still wants to get it pushed back in place so he gets creative I wonder if I can get a socket I was gonna say you want to pull that handle out of there no grandma how do you put it Daniel don't come okay dad they got to they got really good there's no but I think I can get it just on there enough to you know I'm saying yeah just enough I'm gonna keep going with this until but I think it's probably what I've got to be 3/4 or I'll just grab my kid Oh to get the socket to fit Frankie has to make a slight modification to the Jack I didn't need a jack in my truck anyway it's a Dodge it'll never have a problem grind this little handle off there should get the sack of all the way on the end there Franky's just got to get that bottom block to go in a few inches I just pushing that board right on in there yeah but it's getting moved a little though yeah no that block is that blocks moving a little bit with the block pushed in to his satisfaction he's gonna start the tuckpointing except this really isn't tuckpointing this is just mudding the entire wall it looks pretty good for not being a mud guy Frankie just take the compliment now the best way to fix this foundation wall would have been to jack the building up tear out the garage foundation build a brand new garage foundation and set the building back down on top of it problem is not everybody wants to spend that kind of money on an old garage sometimes they just want a few x3 years out of it and that's what we're doing with this one so Frankie seals up the foundation wall then he's gonna tar paper it and then backfill it and that backfill will be extended to both ends of the garage allowing the water to drain out through gravity on each end of the garage wall okay although structurally it's not necessary Frankie wants to put that piece of stucco that he saved back on just for aesthetics so he butters the backside of it and butters the wall to get a better stick between the two the outside patched up Frankie can start working on the inside allowing Alex to finish the backfilling outside before the inch and a half sewer rock goes in belt needs to be cut around the obstacles and put in place with a tight squeeze between the two buildings and the eaves overhanging everything has to be done by hand the mini excavator so the wheelbarrows start coming in and they don't stop until the footing is fall this corner and bath wall is kind of a mystery so Frankie and I try to figure out what happened with it did this get pushed in I don't know if this whole wall got pushed in that far or because this thing get pushed out it's doing that over there to say it's the same thing look right here this mud joint is bro but that means this whole wall has shifted in in so this entire thing is equally pushed in when pushed in then this framing should have pushed with it but did what it did this is what's it been because you can see this wall is totally perfectly well now but it's pretty damn cold right so could that have occurred during the initial backfill of the building and then they framed up on top of a faulty wall or whoever built the lead to begin with did it wrong and separated somehow could see how the mud joints out like that before they built a wall they built the wall that's had to be that could it makes no there's no other way to do it that I can envision for that to be to go out your wall the best pranky and I can figure that the garage foundation wall was actually pushed in before the garage was framed on top of it because if it had been pushed in altogether that framed wall should have been voted as well and it wasn't it was in okay condition [Music] while Frankie's inside getting the wall mudded alex goes to the outside and starts cutting down the grades to get everything to flow away from the buildings [Music] because we can't go over the sill plate of the garage or the house we can't add soil near the garage foundation we've got to do is go away from the garage and start subtracting soil and cut in a swale alex is working on those grades Sam and Frankie are inside tuckpointing and mudding as these tuckpointing Frankie's also using any extra concrete that he has left over to help cor fill that corner and make it a little bit stronger he keeps it extra wet for work its way down through the core fill on its own with the wall back filled with free-draining aggregate and allowed to daylight on both ends it still has to be clay cabbage but instead of explaining it let me just show you what if we put the native soils which are high in clay this is clay holds together retains moisture only on the top about 12 inches or so is that what you'd say you put in Alex or perfect-perfect what that does is any water that sheds doesn't tend to rush right through but runs off and the water that does tend to stick will go through hit the non-permeable zone and run out so we've created a strategy that just keeps the most water away so it becomes a process of adding and subtracting we add the good clay based soil that we want while we subtract the wetter nastier clay based soil and get that away from the building foundation [Music] an easy rule they used to know how far away to stay from the foundation wall is the one-to-one rule if the foundation wall is eight foot tall he should stay 8 feet away from that foundation wall perpendicularly you know he can get his bucket closer horizontally but driving sideways along that foundation will all should be kept further away another wall he's working on is 3 foot so that means he can go just outside of the eaves safely without jeopardizing that foundation wall while Alex and Sam are touching up the grades with a rake Frankie is inside wrapping up the mudding on the wall all right end of the day got this all filled in along here now the boys have regraded to get all of the water to shut away from the buildings but we're gonna go backwards one day one of the questions that came up was won't that green treated timber that you buried just rot away and what I've learned through talking with soil engineers is that when you bury a green treated timber it encapsulates it and actually slows down the decay process a green treated timber like that will last a lot longer being completely buried underground than if the same timber we're just sitting above ground but let's go inside the garage and see how Frankie's doing and Frankie's got all his stuff inside here wrapped up so so we'll be back tomorrow to do the final touch-up work clean up this job site and then Frankie's off to a new position he's actually taking over our lawn care division so we're gonna take you on that ride god bless and go get them guys