Brace the Foundation Walls

If you remember, a few weeks back, some buddies and I gutted the basement in preparation for bracing. The two long 42' walls are slowly tilting in, and one of them has a horizontal crack. Daryl from Michel Construction came in with the best quote ($4000) and came off as the most competent and thorough of the contractors I tried. His quote included 17 4” I-beam braces cemented into the basement floor and reinforced on the floor joists as well as an engineers report stating that the basement was sound. While this work isn’t exactly rocket science, it is ugly, loud, dusty, finicky work, and I really didn’t have the time to do it myself. As well, getting an engineer out to inspect before and after can be a $1000 to $2000 touch alone if you just call someone out of the phone book. Daryl knows an engineer. I sure don’t. And the report is just as valid, regardless of how much I (or Daryl) pay the engineer.

The first thing Daryl and Chad (his employee) did was create holes in the basement floor. To be up to code, the braces must extend at least 3” below the surface of the floor. I marked the hole so you could see it.

Next, they put the i-beam in place, bolted it to the 2X10 rafters, cemented it in place, and carved the crack out before filling it with grout.


The final step was to block back the brace with 2X10 pieces (seen in the picture above sitting beside the braces) and voila – 17 braces in place, and a basement that will never move again! The next step will be to draw up a floor plan, frame the exterior walls, spray-foam the headers, insulate the rest of the walls with R-20 fiberglass, vapour barrier, and drywall. This will be enough to qualify me for the money from the Energuide Grant Program. All that will remain after that is to frame the interior walls, install a bathroom, drywall, install doors, paint the whole thing, install in fixtures, trim, and install a suspended ceiling. Maybe I should have said the “next steps”…