Software
Houzz Logo Print
rss777

Foundation repair no crawl space

6 years ago

So I inherited a house. Very small,about 700 sqft very beautiful..... On the outside. On the inside, 2 of the rooms in the house show heavy foundation damage example floor sinkage, sheet rock cracks etc. This house is over 80 years old, and I come from a poor area, so houses were built very cheaply. It was built with no crawl space. I'm wondering is it possible to repair a house, in which no crawl space is available and the beams are sitting on dirt, or is it too far gone.

Comments (13)

  • 6 years ago





    This is where the house is at its worst.

  • 6 years ago
    last modified: 6 years ago

    Beams sitting on dirt and the resultant rot and structural damage is a condemned house.

  • 6 years ago

    ImI'm aware of that. Nobody is living there, until it gets fixed. I want to know if it is possible to fix.

  • 6 years ago

    Unless money is no object and you are spending it for sentiment’s sake? Tear it down and build a new structure. It will be cheaper.

  • 6 years ago

    Are you sure about beams on dirt? Even the simplest houses had beams sitting on spaced out supports, anything from stumps to boulders to real masonry piers.

  • 6 years ago

    Hmm well the house is free. Its also paid off too, and taxes in its location are very low. So I wouldnt mind sinking money into it. At some point i could either rent it out or keep it. My concern is, if it is even possible to fix or not. Plus i would probably never be forgiven if i tore that house down without trying something lol

  • 6 years ago

    It would probably cost more to fix than to build new is my guess. Get a contractor out there to give you a quote. They would at least need to jack house up, replace supports and beams under whole house. With such extensive work a permit is of course (or should) be pulled. Then it may all have to be brought up to current code. How is the electric, the plumbing, the roof?

  • 6 years ago

    @Seabornman im honestly not sure, but my guess is that it is built into the dirt

  • 6 years ago

    Electric, and plumbing are actually in very good working condition. So is the roof. @Izzy Mn

  • 6 years ago

    Good grief. It's only a slight exaggeration to say that I've seen old chicken coops in better shape. I'm not a big believer in tearing down a viable house, but that poor place is well past its use-by date.

    Your health department most likely won't let you rent out something like that. If they do, shame on them. Your tenants would be fighting off weather and vermin.

    I guess it's possible to save it. You can restore nearly any house if you throw enough money at it. However, it sounds like it's not in an especially desirable neighborhood, so unless it's historically significant, I question whether the value recovered would be worth the cost.

    Assuming the zoning allows, in your place I might demolish it and slap up a modular home in its place. More likely I'd sell it, though, because either way, fix or rebuild, that's not a project I'd want to take on.

  • 6 years ago
    last modified: 6 years ago

    If you can’t afford to build a new house on the property, then you can’t afford to “repair” something that really just needs to be burnt down for fire department practice. That building will never ever be a habitable residence without significant jacking to get it off the ground. Which it can’t endure because there is no structure to support it left.

    The property value is the only value here. The structure actually devalues that, because you need to pay to demolish it.

  • 6 years ago

    The process for repairing/replacing the foundation would be to pull up the flooring, dig up the soil and carry it out the house by buckets to have a crawlspace/basement created and a foundation built.