Larry,
You got the frost heaves. We got those after a person who shall remain 
unnamed decided to cut away all the berming around our foundation to 
"make it easier to mow."

Go with the second guy if the I beams are installed on the inside in 
opposing pairs and tied into the joists at top and set in channels in 
the floor at the bottom.

We went with a different guy who was (and the emphasis is on WAS) an 
acquaintance and an excavator, and he put in C channels but 
throughbolted them to big eyes outside, where he had yes, removed most 
of the front yard and put giant turnbuckles and attached them to 
"deadmen" he poured deep in the yard. The whole process took weeks, he 
sprayed the wall with tar on the outside to stop leaks, he finally 
filled the yard in, and it has sunk in places a foot. And that was just 
to do one wall. And the basement still leaks, and I still don't know how 
many thousand $$ he got paid but he did a terrible job.

The other process uses I beams on all interior walls, and braces across 
on the INSIDE of the house, in pairs. No disturbance outside.

There is a company in Grove City OH that use this method, and I will try 
to get contact info for them. I had all that but their services weren't 
an option since a "buddy" was already  involved in the job, so I let the 
info get submerged in the general information overload here.  :-)

~deb



Lawrence Kestenbaum wrote:
> My house is a 38 x 22 foot ranch house built in 1953; we have owned it
> for ten years.
>
> We are on high ground by Ann Arbor standards.  However, there is water
> on the basement floor after a heavy rain.
>
> The basement is built of concrete blocks.  There are cracks, growing
> gradually in severity over the years, on all four basement walls.  The
> cracks are vertical at the corners, horizontal along the walls.  At
> one end of the house, the wall is bowing inward noticeably.
>
> One noted local contractor told us we needed to hoist up the house,
> tear out the basement, rebuild it from scratch, and attach the house
> to the new basement.  He offered to do this for $50,000.
>
> Of course that doesn't include the cost of moving or replacing our
> relatively new furnace, hot water heater, and circuit breaker box,
> disconnecting and reconnecting the plumbing, re-landscaping the yard,
> etc.
>
> Friends of ours who had to do this with a much larger and older
> 2.5-story house spent a total of some $100,000.
>
> A second contractor recommended a different strategy.  He would tear
> out a couple feet of the basement floor on all four sides, install new
> footing drains, and replace that part of the floor.  He would also
> install 21 vertical 4-inch I-beams along the basement walls to
> preclude further movement.  He offered to do all this for $16,100, and
> guarantee a dry basement for a lifetime, transferable to future
> owners.
>
> What do Pinheads think?
>
>                                                           Larry
>
> ---
> Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
> Washtenaw County Clerk & Register of Deeds, http://ewashtenaw.org
> The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com
> P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
>
> --
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>
>   

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