Two days ago we rented an electric jack hammer and gasoline-powered auger, so I bored a hole what I thought was 2 feet deep. It turns out to only be about 18″ deep. Good enough for a footing, considering it is now about 30″ long! Trying to keep at a reasonable length using a shovel was a challenge as it was all sand and collapsed in. I augured this. (Get it? Auger, augur? Look it up.)
So now I have a 12″ by 30″ by 20″ deep footing. It is long enough to place two teleposts atop it – one permanent, one temporary while the rest of the corner of the building is exhumed.
It will likely take a month of Sundays to cure. I should put a thermal camera on it to see if any reactions are going on within it. In the mean time, before any other digging and removing of slumped soil happens, we wait, as this is where the next beam will be placed.
Meanwhile, at the 4th add-on (bathroom and living room expansion), all looks good underneath. The wood is not rotten, and it sits firmly on a continuous footing. (I’d call it a foundation, but, really, this whole house has none anywhere else.)
The problem is that, when the east side of the original 4-square house is raised 4-3/16″, this addition will not raise itself. The solution is that I have to get under there and cut any anchor bolts holding it down to the footing. With any luck, it is like the rest of the house – haphazardly built – and does not have bolts.
This next picture shows what the original 4-square house footing looks like, on the east side. Blaaah.
In the meantime, we removed all the broken concrete from the east side of the house.
