Water, water everywhere, it makes my home sink

One of the issues with this home, is that it is located in two "Environmentally Critical Areas" or ECAs. This means that there is some consideration which will affect the building or structural requirements for the home. In my case, this home is located in a valley between two hills. At some point in the past, there was a stream which was covered with fill, and surrounding this stream was a peat bog. Unfortunately I don't know right now whether it was filled by man or by natural processes. But regardless, the fill is loose and unstable.

So, I have to deal with liquefaction prone soil (due to the fill) and the potential peat bog underneath. In fact, these soil conditions are a part of the reason the house has settled so much (8" of settling over the 50' or so is quite a lot).

What's a boy to do? Hire a geo-tech of course!

The geo-tech came out and bored two test holes and then wrote up a report detailing the soils encountered, blow counts at the various depths and whether the site is suitable for development.

Lucky for me, the property was suitable for development, either with a slab foundation or pin piles.

Also, I now have a fancy report detailing the soil conditions of my home. I bet you don't have that....

Here you can see the boring machine drilling down into the soil.

Here you can see the probe after it's penetrated between two geologically distinct layers.

Where to begin?

This was my home when I first bought it.

• It was originally built in the 20's (1922 is the best guess I have). The house is one of the older homes on the block.
• The house was originally built as a simple 20' x 40' structure with a front porch.
• Later a 6' deep back porch was added.
• Eventually both porches were closed in (poorly).
• Several interior (non-load bearing) walls were added (again, poorly).
• Finally, the house was built as post and pier construction, meaning the entire house was built using 36 1' x 1' concrete pier blocks, with wooden beams on top of wooden posts. This doesn't provide much bearing for the house, and as a result, the house had settled roughly 8" from the front left corner to the back right corner.
• All of these issues and more would need to be addressed. I knew this going in, and figured that it would be easier to remodel this home than build one from scratch. And seeing that I couldn't afford a new home, this would have to do.
• I started this blog in the Fall of 2011, but I backdating the posts to the appropriate times, so the chronological continuity is coherent. (Does that count as alliteration?)