New Footers
One of the problems with older homes is that they seem to screw up even the best-laid plans for the renovation schedule. I originally decided that if I renovate the two bathrooms and then the kitchen right away, I might avoid a mutiny in the family. The upper bath was in poor but tolerable shape. The downstairs bath was a lab experiment in fungus and mold growth. While working in that bath, I fully expected to come down with the Ebola Virus. I decided to renovate the downstairs bath first. Once that was completed, we would use that bath and I would then renovate the bath at the top of the stairs.

One small problem, I needed to sure up the floor. I couldn't see under that section of the house so I needed to excavate some dirt away from the side of the house and pull off some siding. This exposed a completely rotted out sub-floor, floor joists, and revealed a nonexistent sill plate. I decided to open up the siding on that entire exterior wall of the house. This exposed incredible amounts of rot. This explained alot of sponginess in the floorboards of my office which shares the same outer wall.

Looking through the boards into the crawl space I saw the ground was within 4 to 6 inches of the floor joists. There had also been several attempts to replace pieces of the header board which resulted in making an incredibly week "scabbed together" header board made up of 3 to 5 foot sections. This header board sat right in the red brick wall with no moisture or termite barrier. Incredibly, I have yet to find any evidence of termites.

This was turning into a massive job of shoring up of the outer wall and foundation before I could work on the bathroom. I did however start the demolition of the bath (see the snake in the bath story). To get my head under the house to see the damage and to devise a plan of attack, I was forced to remove some red brick from the foundation. They fell right out making the job pretty easy. Back in the 1880's when this house was built, what we know as mortar was not invented yet. Bricks were laid with a sand and lime mix. This breaks apart pretty easily if isn't powdered already.

As I started pulling bricks out I notice all the floor joists in the office were propped up on a single brick and a 6-inch piece of wood. Someone had realized the joists had rotted away from the header board and rather than repairing the header, they just propped up the floor joists individually. This probably worked for about a week until the bricks pushed into the dirt. This also explained why some of the floor boards were removed and replaced along this wall in my office.

Trying to figure out how many bricks I could safely remove to gain access to this space, I dug down to the footer. Guess what?…. No footer! The house was sitting on six courses of red brick, which were sitting right on the dirt. Oddly enough this house has been here for more than one hundred years so we can only laugh/cry but so much. I know that most houses in this town that were built in the last 10 years will be lucky to outlive their mortgage. The interesting thing here is that there is no footer, there is no mortar, the bottom bricks are above the frost line and there is no significant settling. The only real damage was caused by moisture.

So, where to start? I need to come up with a footer solution to fix the red brick. I need to fix the red brick to set in a sill plate and rebuild the header board to reconnect the floor joists. I need to do all of this before I can remodel the downstairs bath (right away) so my family won't feel inconvenienced. One other small problem, the combination of all these weaknesses mean I can only open up small sections (4 to 5 feet) at a time to dig down and pour a new footer. This forced me to waste a lot of valuable time building jack stands and lag bolting a 2x10 to the side of the wall to hold all the wall studs in place. So far there seems to be no movement in the wall.

This shot shows the reconstructed footer (about 10' of it). The poured concrete is 12" deep and 24" wide with 3 pieces of rebar through it (way overkill). Both layers of cinderblock are filled with concrete and rebar through the base of each layer. (did I mention overkill?) The corner was the hardest part, that's why it was the smallest pour. The second and all other pours were about 5' long. I would set the house down on the prior pour and blocks, then dig the next 5 feet, removing jacks as I go. One of the hardest things to do is to get the exact level of the pour so when I put the two layers of block on, the house is dead level. It's insane, measure, measure again and then pour and re-measure.

Here we see the next pour getting ready. I put a 12" x 6' piece of plywood across the front to form up the concrete. By leveling the plywood, it also gives me a leveling form for the wet mix. You can see the three rebar sticking out of dried footer. You can also see the rebar between the block. I coated the outside of the concrete with tar and started the backfill on the far end. The red brick wall will set on the first block sill and go above the final back fill level about 24". This should stop any further water damage from the high ground level. I will also put 24" flashing behind the entire red brick wall.

In the next step, I pound 3 re-bar about 2 foot into the opposing side of the hole and tie them off to the three sticking out of the concrete. I also wire brush the dirt off the end of the concrete so the new pour adheres better. I keep doing this pain in the !*#@! until I cross the entire back of the house. Dig & prep on Saturday, pour on Sunday, repeat.

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Ebola is both the common term used to describe a group of viruses belonging to genus Ebolavirus, family Filoviridae, and the common name for the disease which they cause, Ebola hemorrhagic fever. The viruses are characterised by a long, filamentous morphology and surrounded by a lipid viral envelope. Ebolaviruses are morphologically similar to the Marburg virus, also in the family Filoviridae, and share similar disease symptoms. It has caused a number of serious and highly publicized outbreaks since its discovery, as well as featuring as the gruesome antagonist in many forms of entertainment. Sand-Lime Mix

Non-hydraulic lime (slaked lime) hardens by a slow process of drying and carbonation, reacting with atmospheric carbon dioxide to form calcium carbonate. This takes a period of some weeks. Hydraulic lime, on the other hand, sets rapidly by reacting with water in a matter of hours.

Cement

Portland cement was developed in 1824; it was used in the role of a hydraulic binder, which was very consistent and made the mix set rapidly. This rapid set was an advantage in cold or very wet conditions. Builders slowly abandoned sand-lime mortar in favour of sand-cement mortars.

By the 1830's, the 1:1:6 mixture of cement, lime and sand ratio had been firmly established. However, sand-cement mortars proved too strong for some applications and lacked some of the workability of sand-lime mortar. By the late 1800's sand-lime mixes were again widely used where increased plasticity, workability and controlled strength was required.

Portland cement remained costly into the 20th century so a minimum was used. For example, the main brick mortar was lime and sand, but pointing included a little cement. Rebar, a contraction for reinforcing bar, is common steel bar, an important component of reinforced concrete and reinforced masonry structures. It is usually formed from carbon steel, and is given ridges for better frictional adhesion to the concrete. It can also be described as reinforcement or reinforcing steel.