[Ic3385]

My deck/porch is sinking in the front. I'm guessing 4inches in 10 years on one corner. The covered porch roof is attached to the house roof. To complicate matters, there is a Hugh boulder wall approximately 10foot in front of the porch front which drops 4/5 ft to ground level. These are Hugh boulders and can only be moved by heavy equipment. The porch needs to be lifted back up and the foundation posts reinforced somehow. Does anyone have any good cost effective ideas on how to fix this problem without destroying the landscaping?

[dannac]

Picture would help.

[Ic3385]

Your right, it would. I'll need to figure out how to do that. Thanks for the quick response and suggestion.

[dannac]

I usually upload my photos to www.photobucket.com.

Then copy the image url and paste it into the message area.

[smoothy]

I've never done this myself... but I've seen it done on some shows.

They have what are called bottle jacks... Equipment rental places rent them out. You basically put down a timber to distribute the load... and do the same on your lift point. If its all on a common single joist it makes life easier. I'm guessing this was once a regular portch that at come point was covered and enlosed considerably adding to the weight on the piers. I'm also assuming until photos are posted its on piers and not a perimeter foundation.


You would use the bottle jack or jacks to raise it to level, and since its clear the original isn't either sufficient size or on stabile enough ground, you would dig dow to at least below the frost line in you area, or deeper than the original, and much wider than the original ( to distribute the load over a wider area)... pour a new concrete pad to put a new pier on, and once that's done... I would do the other side the same way because that would now likely be the weak link.

Thats if its a wood porch. If its all concrete or brick construction....the complexity and difficulty just got significantly higher.

[smearcase]

As smoothy suggested, jacking of some type is a possibility, but I wonder if the boulder wall has shifted. Sounds like the boulder wall is actually a retaining wall and what you are interpreting as settlement could really be soil moving out (horizontally) and leaving a void under the support post. Even giant boulders can move or shift whether it because of erosion underneath, slight tremors and many other reasons.

[ma0641]

Hard to say without seeing it. I just lifted a settled house corner on a pier by cribbing up 6X6 timbers and lifting with 2 ton screw jacks. We lifted the house off the pier, re-barred under the footing and added concrete and then built the pier up. Took a couple days but very little cost.

[Fr_Chuck]

I agree, I bought and remodeled homes for years. Hehe, how I can afford to live in China.. but many had porches that was off level, even floors off level. You get under and jack them up, put in new supports and go from there. Is there a basement or crawl space, under home. The last house, I had to go under porch from the crawl space.

Had to remove part of foudation for that.