Category: Pat ‘n’ Steph

This is a Dutch word to describe what they are now doing on the foundation work.  If I look up the word in an online dictionary, it says ‘recess’, but I don’t think that’s quite right.  Anyone have a better translation?

Anyway, in the picture above, you can see they have made some holes in bottom of the wall, 50cm every 50cm to be exact.  They will make these holes all the way around the house, and in each one put a jack like you see above.  In this way, half the house will be supported by means of a jack.

In foundation repairs jacks are always used.  This is because you somehow have to move the weight of the house from the old foundation to the new one, and jacks are always needed in some way.  I think the way they will do it with my house is a little unusual however.

What will happen is they will pour a new concrete floor and entomb the jacks, as well as fill the spaces in the walls.  The concrete floor will have a complex reinforcing structure, and will be supported by the piles that were driven earlier.  The new foundation will then be in place, and capable of supporting the house.

Over time, the old foundation will continue to degrade and sink, and in this way the weight will gradually be taken up by the new foundation.  The construction engineer mentioned he included in his calculations that the old foundation will continue to provide a degree of support for the house into the future.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about my house foundation, with all the excitement of the events in Brussels, I almost stopped paying attention.  They’ve just gotten to the exciting part!  They’re removing the contaminated ground under the house.

Since the house is built nearly at water level, they didn’t have to dig far before they reached water.  In the picture above you can see they inserted a measuring stick so they could monitor the water level with respect to the dirt.  Soon they are going to start running a pump to remove some of the water, so they can dig deeper.  Rain is forecast, so the water table might start rising too.

You can see the pipes sticking out of the ground are what they drove for the piles.  They aren’t yet filled with concrete, but that’s due to happen on Monday.

The smell is quite incredible.  Oily and very dirty smelling.  It’s classified by the city as very toxic waste (when compared to what they usually find under peoples houses in the city).  Mostly it’s heavy metals that are the problem; high levels of zinc, a bit of lead and mercury, and some other things.  The test showed traces of petroleum distillates.  It’s very dirty!

According to city records, until 1930 or so the house had a dirt floor.  What they found was 3 different concrete floors built on top of one another.

The house is 350 years old and and been sinking the whole time.  Literally, from one generation to the next, they’ve just been dumping their crap into the floor, letting it sink and building a new floor on top.

Here you can see the former load bearing wall I posted about before.  Now it’s a nice new steel beam.

They’ve made remarkable progress over the last few days.  The wall is almost gone, just a few difficult spots left.  They’ve also broken up half the floor.

Where the wall used to be are piles of bricks…

There’s an incredible diversity among the bricks.

It’s almost time to remove the load bearing wall in the middle of my house.  For new readers, I’ve already made a series of posts about my foundation repair and here.

The piles have all been driven, and the city has inspected them and given approval.  One pile went a little wrong, perhaps driven a little fast and too enthusiastically, but wasn’t deemed a serious problem.  Still to be done on the piles are to fill the hollow pipes with concrete.

In the meantime however, the empty pipes of the piles are the most stable thing in the house, so they are building the support structures needed for the load bearing wall removal on top of the pipes.  You can see on the bottom left of the picture below, a section of pipe sticking out of the floor.

The support structure above is built on 3 pile pipes, and is about a half meter off the floor.  On the right side of the picture, you can see a hole in the wall.  That part of the wall was in a particularly bad state, and basically fell apart as they were installing the support.  In front of the hole, you can see the pile of bricks that came from the hole.

The picture below was pretty much taken of the same angle, but of the ceiling.  You can see how the steel bars are supporting the ceiling.  This same sort of support was built along both sides of the load bearing wall.

Below is the support structure built used along the outer walls.

It’s really been a big undertaking to build this support structure!  It was built, then the contractor came along and decided it needed to be changed, then the construction engineer came along and decided it needed to be changed, then the contractor wanted to change it again.

Today the city came along to give their final approval to remove the wall.  The good news is they gave their approval, but the bad news is the support structure needs to be changed again and strengthened!  The city also wants a simple support installed on the front of the house.

It’s probably a little more interesting for the Europeans reading this, but the bricks in my house are very special.  They are the original ones used to build my house 350 years ago, and they were all handmade.  The guy doing the demolition work has been removing them one at a time, cleaning and stacking them.

The contractor tells me they are worth money!  At a yard sale they apparently go for €2-3 a piece.  I don’t know if I’ll pay back the cost of my foundation that way, but they are clearly an important part of the history of my house.