rain, rain, go away ... seriously

13-may. three day weekend planned. tom & troy heading to kansas for the weekend to see troy's family so tom was able to loan me his car for the weekend. south shore train service not running sat/sun due to track repairs (first weekend of season for scheduled repairs).

arrived @ the house around midnight, car loaded up w/the lillberg sofa i found on craigslist. living room now has some permanent seating.

i was anxious to see the house & see if the rainstorm on wed night had caused any damage. when i opened the basement door i could see the floor was still damp & was worried. it looks like the rain had come in from the bad foundation wall, may have been an inch or two of standing water. the water heater pilot was out & the insulation on the underside (closest to the floor) was damp, so the water had reached high enough to get that wet. luckily, the pilot re-lit & the water heater wasn't actually damaged. i will need to either have the water heater raised a little on bricks or create a barrier around the water heater to keep the area around it dry. there was dirt on the floor that had washed in from outside as well.

the worst part though was the foundation. i had marked a 2x4 beam that is split & still attached to the wall w/a straight line across the split, this way if there was any movement in the wall & beam, i would know. since january there hadn't been any movement, until now. it looks like there was about 1/4" of movement in the wall from the rain.

also, about 1/3 of the bags of concrete mix i bought to fortify the wall were lost due to the water (all the bags directly on the floor, stacked 3 bags high).

friday morning i went outside to check the exterior of the house. the ground adjacent to the bowed foundation sank a little more after the rain. i decided not to wait any longer & regrade the low spot to direct water away from the house. my only immediate option was to buy 40lb bags of top soil to fill in the depression ... by the end of the weekend i had nearly 100 bags in place. i covered the soil w/tarp & bricks until it settles (may need to add more to make sure the grade is away from the house). i was worried though the extra weight on the foundation may do some more damage ...

friday i started making the form to pour concrete in the basement to fortify the compromised foundation wall. i started by pouring a 2 foot by 2 foot footer along the base of the wall. next step will be to build up from the base with a 1 foot thick wall 2-3 feet high, reinforced w/rebar (set into the base as well). basically making a new support wall of steel reinforced concrete up against the existing foundation wall. hopefully this will halt the movement. if it works well, i may extend the repair further along the wall (currently doing on 4 foot section), hopefully it holds the wall until i can have the entire wall replaced in the future.

so basically the entire weekend was spent alternating between adding dirt outside the house to raise the ground level to direct water away from the house & pouring concrete in the basement to hold the foundation in place ...

also picked up a new pedestal sink & tonge-and-groove paneling/siding for the bathroom (4 foot length to cover lower portion of walls that are damaged) ... that all will have to wait though until the foundation repair is complete.

friday afternoon i mowed the lawn w/new reel mower (they don't work that great), will be nice when i can relandscape the yard. luckily there isn't much grass to mow.


saturday afternoon headed to michigan for grandmother's 75th birthday party in jerome. was nice to see my family, though i couldn't stay the night because i had to get back to work on the house.

on sunday ran to lowes for last trip of supplies for foundation repair (more wood for form work & also more dirt.

left around 4pm & had tom's car back in his parking garage by 5.30!