Repair of the foundation of a wooden house

Old wooden houses go to new owners in different situations. They can become property by inheritance; some citizens deliberately purchase cheap housing as a summer cottage. Both of them subsequently face the same problems. Due to the influence of time or lack of maintenance, wooden houses require major repairs. First of all, it is necessary to fix the foundation, insulate the walls, repair the roof, replace windows and doors. And after that you can move on to internal work. The foundation is the basis of any structure, so the restoration of a wooden house most often begins with it. Repair work should be carried out in warm and dry weather.
Common foundation damage.
Depending on the area and the era of construction, there are different types of foundations.
The oldest houses stand on ordinary stones, the cracks between which are sealed with cement-sand mortar. Over time, numerous cracks appear, which increase annually if the owners do not carry out timely maintenance.
Monolithic foundations replaced stone foundations a little later. However, they were made by their ancestors without taking into account the depth of soil freezing and without a reinforcing frame. Therefore, the corners of the house often sag, and wide cracks appear in the foundation.

Any of these foundations can be repaired on your own by spending money on materials and devoting your free time to the activity.
Repairing cracks and crevices in the foundation
To restore the strength of the foundation of the house, you must first consider the next steps to repair the entire structure. It’s one thing if you just need a cosmetic update to the appearance (plastering, painting). In this case, you can use reinforcing mesh and plaster to restore the foundation. But if you plan to insulate the house, decorate the walls with siding or relief plaster, then you have to increase the thickness of the base. The technology for such repairs looks different.

First, an excavation is made under the base of the old foundation. This is necessary to increase the adhesion of the new concrete layer to the old one.
Next, reinforcement of sections of the foundation with cracks is carried out. To do this, holes are drilled with a hammer drill into which pieces of reinforcement with a diameter of 8-10 mm and a length of 150-200 mm are hammered. They should protrude outward by about 3-5 cm.
The individual steel pins must be connected to each other with binding wire.
The next stage of repair will be the installation of formwork. The distance between the plank structure and the concrete base is selected taking into account the increase in the width of the walls. The formwork must be securely supported with supports from the outside, and wooden partitions are installed inside to fix the width.

The fastest stage of work will be pouring the cement-sand mixture into the formwork.To speed up the preparation of concrete, you will need a concrete mixer, and you will have to work with construction mixtures using shovels.

In this simple but effective way, you can restore 2-3-meter sections of a cracked foundation.
Complete replacement of the concrete base
In the case of a stone foundation, as well as in case of subsidence of corners with complete spalling of large sections of concrete, it will be necessary to completely replace the foundation. This work must be done in stages, using the following scheme.
The first step is to remove stones or a piece of concrete from under one of the corners. To do this, a certain layer of earth is selected and the remains of the old foundation are removed. At this stage, you can lift the sagging corner of the log box using a jack.

If the soil is loose, then it is necessary to install internal formwork and secure it. The length of the section is limited to 2-3 m.
Using steel reinforcement or rods, a reinforcing frame is made. It must extend beyond the area being restored so that the reinforcing belt can be tied into a single metal structure.

The individual rods are connected to each other with binding wire.

After this, you can begin installing the external formwork. To fix the wooden structure, internal struts and external supports are used.

Stones from the old foundation are placed on the bottom of the formwork, and concrete is poured.

It is important to compact the concrete mixture thoroughly to eliminate large air pores. It is best to break old pieces of concrete with a heavy sledgehammer.
After a day, the formwork can be moved to another area, where an internal plank wall has been pre-installed and a reinforcing frame has been created.

When the entire foundation around the perimeter of the house has been restored, you can begin decorating it or start repairing the walls.Now you don’t have to worry about the foundation of the house.