Foundation - Plumbing Questions
A, crooked piers is no way to start and B,it could be very drafty and cold in winter,insulation or not. Full foundation gets my vote although its not my pocketbook.
Three years ago we renovated our kitchen and extended it onto the back porch, making a larger footprint. The porch is on two piers and tied into the outside wall of the basement. This required deconstruction of the porch with rebuild from the floor up.
Several comments based on this experience. The floor is well insulated and we covered the underside with plywood, yet it is noticeably colder in the winter by a lot. The two piers, despite additional framing along the outside edge were not enough to keep that span from settling. We later added a lally column in the center of the span to remedy this. We did not run water or drains through this area because of concerns for freezing.
In a more recent project on our home, we built a front porch that required new foundations to be constructed. We used poured concrete footings, and block pilings. The trenches had to be about four feet below grade and we had four dug and built at combined cost of $2,000 for this part of the construction. Hopefully this gives you a reference point.
Georgieboy - thanks the input, i suspect you are correct.
Rowerg - many thanks for sharing your experience. That is super helpful and sounds similar to what we are trying to do. Can I ask (even if you send privately) who you used to do this foundation work?
What Georgieboy and Rowerg said. A full foundation is definitely the best way to go, sad to say.
Hi,
We are working up plans to move our bathroom into the bumpout/porch in the back of our house. This will entail basically ripping the whole thing down so it can be properly insulated and leveled. My question is about the foundation, which is two piers that are slightly crooked. We have had two engineers look at it with one saying they would be fine to rebuild on while the other said we should rip them out and pour a new foundation. The latter assessment sounds extreme and expensive, while the former seems almost hard to believe.
Anyone have any thoughts? Anyone know a good expert that could help figure it out and provide a third opinion?
Second question – anyone know of plumbers who would be a paid consultant on a job? I basically need someone to help me plan the DWV system for the new bathroom. I’ll do the work myself and am comfortable with running the supply pipes but I want to make sure I have everything up to code on my plans.
Thanks!!