Bowing Knee Walls

[Bowed Wall]

Our knee walls are bowing, the concrete block below it doesn't look to bad, though it has some cracking. A structural engineer said the bowing was 2.5 inches and when it gets to three it will fail and the house will collapse. It was built in 1929. We had it sold, but this statement from the structural engineer killed the deal. Foundation guys want $90K+ to rebuild all four walls. A builder said it might just need new knee walls. Another builder said it's fine, no need to do anything (although nobody will buy it in this condition). We don't know what to do. I saw a post from Jerry who said he had an article on this topic, but I messed up trying to request it. Any guidance anyone has would be greatly appreciated since we aren't sure what to do.

[hausdok]

Hi,

First, if you're referring to a short framed wall between the underside of your floor platform and the top of the foundation, it's not a kneewall; it's a cripple wall - kneewalls are found in attics. It it's a cripple wall, framing it is easy, it's getting the old one out and the new one in that's a problem.

A customer of mine who's new home I'd just inspected, whose purchase of a new house was contingent on the sale of her old house, called me up in a panic a few years ago because she'd had a similar $90,000 quote given to her for the same thing - I wonder if the contractor who'd quoted you that has changed locals. Anyway, I told her to call a local house moving firm as well as a framing contractor. The first to see what it would cost to temporarily put the house on steel and cribbing so that the old cripple walls could all be torn out at once; the second to pre-fabricate and skin new cripple walls, remove the old one's, install the new ones, secure the house and foundation to them, and side them. She ended up getting quotes to correct the whole thing for a total of less than $20,000, then rolled credit for that cost into her transaction, and got her house sold.

A contractor can do that job in a fraction of the time when he doesn't have to screw around with supporting the structure and constantly moving jacks and braces around. The cost of having the house moving guy come in and stabilize things so that the contractor can quickly pre-fab the cripple walls and then get them installed was well worth it in her case.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[randynavarro]

Pictures would help us speak to the issue a bit more intelligently.

[kurt]

Pics. It's impossible to know what all the problems are without pics.

BTW, I lived on Turkey Run Rd. from 1955-59, and attended Bird Elementary School for Kindergarten & 1st grade. When we lived in Plymouth, it was dirt roads and cornfields.