How To Fix An Undulating Wall Foundation
70The Ups And Downs
From the beginning, it was clear the concrete blocks forming the perimeter foundation of our do it yourself earthbag wall home...were anything but level. When you're starting from scratch with nothing but a contractor's front end loader for a homesite leveling device, you make allowances. You especially make allowances when the trenches containing septic and water piping have yet to be filled in with a number two shovel.
However, I figured it wouldn't be all that difficult to even things out at the proper time by rigging a level wall atop an anything-but-level line of blocks. Today turned out to be the "proper time". I was right. The task was pretty straightforward.
Though it did require several hours to rig the first twenty-foot two-by-four sill board properly. Thankfully, this first section is by far the worst; the rest of the perimeter should be a piece of cake, a portion of pastry, a....
Well, it will if I can keep Murphy distracted. (For the confused reader, that's a reference to Murphy's Law.)
The front (eastern) half of the house had all of the roof trusses but one installed. The back (western) half would require that sill board to be in place for a number of reasons.
Masonry Nails And A Twelve Inch Spike
The first step after putting a long (20 foot) two-by-four where it needed to be along the tops of the concrete blocks (as the first portion of a wall that will later receive R-11 insulation) was to tack it firmly in place at the two spots where it actually touched the blocks. Every other spot had a gap between block and board. These gaps were then filled here and there--so that the sill board had plenty of support points--using a combination of short board pieces (horizontal) and super-short board pieces (vertical).
Although a tad time-consuming, this procedure worked extremely well...except where the gap went beyond reason to "humongous". Now we had a problem:
1. Where the gap was widest, the longest masonry nail I had...couldn't even reach the block, let alone sink into the concrete far enough to provide significant resistance to lateral movement.
2. Naturally (assuming Murphy's Law to be natural), that was exactly where several feet of earthbag wall bulged inward due to an error I'd made one night while finishing a shift by flashlight. More than anywhere else on the entire perimeter, that precise location had to be firmly anchored.
Oops.
After pondering the best laid plans of mice and men for a while, I decided to drill a 3/8" hole down through the wood...and as far as possible through the concrete block itself. A twelve inch spike would then be tapped down through the hole and into the underlying earth. This would have been an absolutely brilliant solution...except....
The drilling went really well as far as it went, but it did not go far enough. Could not go far enough. Even with the masonry bit barely held by the drill chuck at all, reaching for every possible millimeter of length, the bit was still not long enough to reach down through all that wood and all that concrete at the same time. It came up short by about half an inch.
Okay. Nothing for it. I wasn't about to lose the better part of a day by running to town in a likely futile attempt to find a longer masonry bit. It could only be hoped that when that bottom half inch of masonry broke to the pressure of the spike, it would break a chunk downward, leaving the outside edges of the block intact and all that.
Yeah, right.
However, the obviously cracked-open portion held position fairly well. Tugging firmly on the sill board didn't produce any movement. Murphy or no Murphy, this was a result we could live with.
Although it did take three hours of steady work to install just one board. If every chunk of lumber required that sort of attention, the house would be ready for occupancy in or around the year 3032....
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Sylvia, what caused the wall to bulge was me being tired, stupid, working by the light of a small flashlight held in my mouth while maneuvering a sizeable plank on an otherwise pitch dark night. In other words, I believe I had (without realizing it until almost too late) allowed the "far end" of a plank to "whack" the wall repeatedly. My bad. I was like a bully on the beach kicking over my own sand castle. Really, really not-smart.
To keep the walls perpendicular (or nearly so) during construction, a combination of several techniques were used:
1. A great eye (Never mind looking for the humility; I don't have any.). I grew up stacking hay bales on a Montana ranch. If you couldn't eyeball the stack as you built it...and keep it nice and vertical without the use of anything but said eyeball...the stack would either fall down or turn into a really stupid-looking pyramid that held more rainfall than it shed. Most any rancher can do the same, though some do use a machine that makes a smallish stack all by itself.
2. A length of two-by-four planted on the ground next to the outside edge of the concrete blocks. If the bags closest to the board looked like they were showing too much gap (airspace between bag and board) or if the bags pushed at the board so that it was obviously leaning, then adjustments were in order. This was not an "every bag" sort of thing, just whenever it seemed like a good idea.
3. Backing off frequently so that a sighting could be taken along an entire wall length.
By using these three techniques--and mostly avoiding the ridiculous whacking of bags after dark--the results came out surprisingly accurate. Despite the several "leans, flares, and bulges" created by everything from carelessness to high winds, none of the top-of-the-wall measurements varied from the bottom-of-the-wall figures by more than a couple of inches.
Not perfect, but not a problem, either.
you make me :)
:)
Sylvia, as Martha Stewart would say, "That's a GOOD thing!" :D
sylvia 2 years ago
hello Ghost
re #2: that was exactly where several feet of earthbag wall bulged inward
what caused the wall to bulge?
how did you ensure throughout the construction, that the walls remained perpendicular?