Sill plate fun!

The last couple of weeks have been slower - lots of non-home repair activities going on, so I haven't updated in a while.  Basically, the drainage issues are fixed and the basement is dry, so I'm moving on to the interior.  The exterior isn't done, but it'll be OK for the winter. 

The stretch of rotten sill plate was the next piece of the puzzle.  The basic premise is pretty straightforward - build a structure of some kind to take the weight off of the existing wall, sawzall out the existing sill plate, smack in a new one, and then reattach everything.  Once again, lessons were learned, a few things got broken, a few mistakes got made.

On to the fun!

The first step in the process was to cut open the ceiling to expose the joists, and then I nailed in a temporary top plate. 

Next, build a temporary wall and smack it under the top plate with a sledge.  Here's what a wall looks like in handy kit form:

Assembled

and smacked into place with a sledge

The first lesson I learned was that 3/4" is a lot more than you can lift a house using just a temporary wall and a sledge.  My temporary wall showed its displeasure at the abuse I put on it by bowing seriously and refusing to go all the way to plumb. 

I ended up shoring it up with a floor jack, just in case.  Once that was in place, I started smacking in steel wedges and a prybar to give me room to get the sawzall in.

Pretty soon, I had one whole section removed!

For some reason, on this first one, I thought it necessary to take the old board out in relatively intact chunks.  (The next one, I just ripped it up with a bar and wedges and it went a lot faster...  Live and learn.)  To this end, I thought it wise to try to remove four-foot chunks.  To do that, I had to figure out a clever way to cut through the board, and the first thing I tried was a drill bit of suitable diameter.  However, after grinding it quite a bit against the top of the foundation, it pretty quickly stopped being a drill bit. 

See, it's supposed to have this shape:

But after a few minutes of high-speed grinding on concrete, it looks like this:

Eventually, I got the whole big chunk out, and it was time to put in the replacement piece.  Navigating long bits of lumber through the house is a pain in the ass - there's always something you don't notice in time.  After I broke a light fixture (and replaced it and hid the evidence), I got to saw this one to length...

After I smacked it into place with a sledgehamer, I had my assistant drill some holes in the new sill plate and the concrete:

More holes...

And screw in some tapcons...

Pretty soon, that section was done!

The next section to be replaced was on the end of the house.  Jim suggested that I'd be able to lift the house from the end using my existing temporary wall, and that the rigidity of the sheathing would allow me to remove the section on the end without further lifting.  He ended up being partially right - I could get about halfway down the wall, but not enough to get the whole bad section out.  I ended up knocking down my temporary wall and starting over.  I didn't think a temporary wall would work very well, as I'd be building it parallel to the existing floor joists, and it'd be hard to get significant lift on the exterior wall that way while still allowing me to get between the support and the wall to replace the sill plate. I decided that I'd be better off getting at the framing of the exterior wall and jacking that as directly as I could. 

My first step was to expose the framing in the end of the house and get a substantial hunk of wood under the top plate of the exterior wall.  I tied in to three other joists as well, to spread the load around better.  Sharp-eyed viewers will note that the big hunks of wood used here used to be decorative faux post-and-beam bits from the kitchen.  I guess it pays to be a packrat sometimes. 

Next, I hung a plumb bob off of it to help me put the jack in the right place.  I have no idea if this was smart or just overly anal - but I kept having images of fingers crushed underneath a wall, so I went with anal.

Next, I installed a similar bit at the other end of the sill plate, and installed a couple of floor jacks under them.  I found that I couldn't get the required torque on the wrench, so I stuck a 3 foot piece of black pipe over the end.  The guy at the hardware store called the length of pipe "A serious breaker bar.  Something will absolutely break."

Naomi said "Daddy!  That's a big wrench!"

Action shot!

The house lifted up without incident, and pretty soon, we had another 12 feet of sill plate replaced!  I learned a few things on this one - I brought the 12 footer in through the window, I didn't destroy any bits, and I didn't try to gently preserve the rotted plate I was removing.  This one went much faster than the first one.  Tada!

Then, I gently removed the jacks, and the house is sewn up once again.

Over the next couple of weekends, I'll need to replace the last little chunk of trashed sill plate, and then it's on to wallboard. 

The Big UnDig!

My goal for the last couple of weeks has been to install the perimeter drain and the drain for the gutter and backfill everything.  This meant lots of time on the tractor and lots of time spent crawling around in the mud. 

The perimeter drain is basically just a long piece of perforated pipe laid in a bed of gravel.  Steph and I had several discussions around whether the pipe should be laid with the holes up or with the holes down.  Intuition said holes up, but the correct way turns out to be holes down.  The perimeter drain isn't meant to move large volumes of water quickly, it's meant to constantly move small volumes of water.  This means that if the holes are down, the water can be pretty shallow and still get into the pipe where it'll drain away.  If the holes are up, the water has to be at least four inches deep to get into the pipe.  I'd rather have water a half inch deep than four inches deep.  There should never really be much more than a trickle coming out of the system.  The water that this system moves has percolated down through the soil at a pretty slow rate.  In comparison, the gutter pipe is meant to move large volumes of water relatively quickly, so that pipe is solid and has a steeper slope. 

My original thought was to plumb the gutters into the same perimeter drain system, but a bit of research pointed out that I didn't want to add more water to that area - the whole point of the perimeter drain was to remove water from that area. 

A side note on researching this project - I've been amazed at the vast amount of information that's available for free on the internet.  Obviously, a lot of sifting is required to separate the good information from the bad, but I simply couldn't have done this project without it. 

Speaking of things I couldn't have done this project without - the star of this episode is my neighbor John's John Deere 3038e tractor.

It's a compact tractor - the wheelbase is only 5 feet.  This came in really handy on this project.  If it weren't for this puppy, I'd be renting a bobcat for a couple hundred bucks a day.  

Day one started out smoothly enough.  My first task was to move all of the clay that had been excavated so I could get in there to backfill with rock and sand.  What I didn't realize (because I'd slept through it) was that there was a massive downpour the night before.  My backyard isn't particularly prone to being real dry anyway, so it wasn't long until disaster struck. 

Yep. That's stuck.  The front wheel on the right hand side is actually underground here.  It's hard to get one stuck, but when it's stuck, it's really in there.  Eventually, I stumbled upon the (rather obvious) method of using the bucket to lift the front wheels out of the mud.  Once I did that, I grabbed my wheelbarrow and attempted to dump in a load of crushed stone.  That's when I got my wheelbarrow stuck.  In an attempt to get my wheelbarrow unstuck, I stepped off the high spot and into a wheel rut, and I got myself stuck.

These boots are 16" tall.  That stuff's deep!

Eventually, I managed to get a bunch of loads of sand, stone and a few random bits of firewood under the front wheels. I did this by laying sheets of plywood over the muddy sections of the yard. Eventually, I put enough stuff in the hole that I was able to lower the wheels back onto it and drive it out.

Notice the suspiciously tractor-sized hole in the yard?

If ever there was an indication of the water problems in the backyard, here it is.  Over the course of next few days, I very nearly got stuck several other times, but the bucket trick got me out every time.   I also hit upon the idea of adding a bucket or two full of sand to the wetter areas whenever it was getting especially soft.  This made a huge difference as well. 

Once I got my old dirt moved over, I had room to get in there to drop a load of crushed stone.  Then, I laid the first bit of pipe!

Note that we're not going all the way around the house here - eventually I'll be doing the other end.  Once the state gives me the go-ahead to dig in that part of the world, at any rate.

The pipe here is covered with a polyester sock that supposed to filter out most of the crap, but there's a layer of geotextile fabric on either side of the crushed stone, too, to keep out the finer stuff. 

I ended up laying two runs of pipe rather than my originally planned single run.  Steph pointed out one morning that pipe was pretty cheap, and excavation is expensive and time consuming, so why not lay two runs? 

After I laid the pipe, I moved in more stone, put a layer of geotextile filter fabric on top of that, and backfilled with sand. 

This messy cross-section shows pretty well my multi-point strategy for keeping water out of the basement:

1.  Redo the tar on the foundation
2.  Add a waterproof dimpled membrane to keep water off the foundation and relieve hydrostatic pressure
3.  Add a perimeter drain system
4.  Backfill with fast-draining sand instead of clay
5.  Re-grade away from the house instead of towards it

You can't, of course, see the interior perimeter drain or the gutters in this shot, but if all this doesn't keep the place dry, I don't know what would. 

By the end of the first day, I'd managed to lay only about 20 feet of pipe - moving stuff around was taking a lot longer than I thought it would.  I did manage to make it around the corner, though. 
 

See?  Corners!

Another thing I learned off of the internet - when you're doing corners, you shouldn't use 90° elbows.  Instead, you should use two 45° bends.  Roto-rooter or similar systems apparently have a difficult time making a 90° corner, but can handle the 45° corners with relative ease.  Thanks, internet! 

At the end of the first day, the kids came home from school and were immediately fascinated by the tractor. 

Eddie saddled up first, but I couldn't fit both of us on it at the same time so he could drive...

Naomi, on the other hand, was small enough that I could put her to work!

A girl and her tractor...

The next day, I filled in the corner.  This odd looking bit of plumbing is the pipe to the gutter.  The capped leg off the wye is in case I want to tie in another drain.  I'm thinking I'll need this to drain the backyard. I don't know if I'll tackle that until the spring, though. 

Two runs of perimeter drain and the gutter drain:

Add stone, sand, soil. Repeat.

It's coming right at me!

When we originally removed the old patio slider, Jim said he wanted the panes of glass.  He wasn't sure what, exactly, he'd need them for, but he definitely wanted them.  I put them aside back in May, and they've been moved around the property ever since.  Their final resting place was leaning up against the front porch.  This seemed a great place to leave them, until the kids decided to start throwing hunks of clay at each other. 

Cause, you know, there's no way anybody coulda' predicted that this was gonna happen.

This made for a helluva mess. A rather pretty mess, as it turns out.

Oooh, look!  Early snow!

Shiny, scratchy, very sharp snow.

Once I got that cleaned up, it was back to hauling dirt around.  Progress on this side of the house was much faster as I didn't have to move the old crappy clay soil out of the way.  The soil from the side of the house was much sandier and should drain just fine, so I just needed to move it back into the hole.  I even managed to do this without getting the tractor stuck, or falling into the excavated hole.  I had to take down a few little trees and some branches to get the tractor in there, and I got the chainsaw stuck when a tree went entirely the wrong way on me.  But, no problem, tractor to the rescue!  A bit of chain tied to the bucket, and the saw was unstuck in no time.

Seriously.  This thing kicks so much ass.  

Before I knew it, I was done!  The first part of the backfilling took so long, that I was kinda surprised to find that suddenly there were no more holes to fill.

About the only thing left to do for the perimeter drain was to add some grates to keep the rodents out.  I glued the grates into the fittings, but I didn't glue the fittings onto the pipe, so if I need to get in there, I don't need to cut anything.  I had a spastic moment while priming the various parts.  I found out that purple primer tastes about like it smells, which is to say "very bad".

My ghetto workbench - the trailer currently residing in the middle of my front yard.  Cause we're classy like that. 

Then, I just had to tap them in place on the ends of the pipes, and...

Perimeter drain!

That's a wrap!

Starting to put it back together...

There comes a time in any project where you stop tearing things apart, and start putting them back together. Last week marked that point. The excavation is done and the oil tank is out, so it's time. First, I borrowed Pete's awesome pressure washer. Both Erik and my Dad offered the use of theirs, but they're fairly anemic compared to this thing:

It runs on a 9HP gas engine, and generates 3600 PSI. This ain't my daddy's pressure washer.  It made short work of cleaning the crap of the foundation, while sucking my well dry in short order. 

Action shot:

Clean on the left, dirty on the right. Clean obviously being a relative thing.

Working conditions:

You can pressure wash your clothing, too.  In this case, it was the only thing that got my boots clean. 

Next, it was time to apply a new coat of foundation sealer.  Naomi really wanted to help with this part, for reasons I can't figure. 

Mixing it up...

Like paint. Really, really thick, sticky nasty paint.

Rolling it on...

Naomi wearing my old boots to play in the mud...

Child labor rocks!

The artiste at work

Free hugs!

The next day, I put up dimpled membrane over the exposed part of the foundation.  This stuff relieves hydrostatic pressure against the wall and provides good waterproofing.  

Oooh, presents!

Sadly, I didn't get paid for this blatant plug:

It's easy. First you roll it out...

Using your first hand, you hold the stuff up against the wall. Using your second hand, you measure where the plug goes.

Using your third hand, you put the plug into the membrane. Using your fourth hand, you load the Ramset and hold it against the plug, and using your fifth hand, you swing the hammer. Easy!

Until you miss. Then, the "unbreakable impact-resistant handle" of the Ramset helpfully breaks off.

Cut to the proper height

And apply the molding on top. This will be buried just below grade.

That pretty well wrapped up the membrane installation, so it was time to start moving stone around. I borrowed my neighbor's tractor for this task. I was going to rent a Bobcat for this task, but John recently bought this tractor with a loader, and he was kind enough to loan it to me. Good neighbors rock.  And I really, really want a tractor now.


Look at this gorgeous hunk of man meat driving this piece of machinery.  Just look! 

The view from the seat:

Dumping the load... 

Repeat 427 times to move 18 yards of crushed stone.  This took longer than I thought it would, but I was imagining what it would have been like to do this with a wheelbarrow and a shovel.  A few hours later, I managed to backfill the hole where the oil tank was and move all 18 yards of stone from the driveway to the backyard.  Pretty soon we'll be able to lay the perf pipe around the foundation, woohoo!

What happens if you repeatedly run over a broom with a tractor:

Next, we'll be doing the same trick with 18 yards of coarse sand.