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18th July 2010, 08:50 PM #1
Double Brick - Cracking, clay soil and hydraulic engineers
Hi all, sorry for the long post, however here goes.
Have a double brick house that has quite a bit of minor cracking (barely 1mm) but a couple of major cracks (5mm).
Am looking to renovate, but want to minimise the amount of cracking that will occur.
So basically what appears to be happening is that the house appears to be sinking/moving toward one side. We also have a large tree (40 years old) on our nature strip, approx. 6 meters from the front of the house.
Archicentre mentioned that the major reason of cracking was due to the drought and the tree's roots searching for water, encroaching on our property. The fix was, where there was cracking, to cut out a section of the wall around the crack, afix some metal sheets to strengthen the walls and then replaster over, however they mentioned that this could just move the cracking elsewhere.
The mentioned underpinning was an option, but that it's not that effective for the cost (to underpin the whole house).
An interior designer mentioned that down the side of the house we have a concrete path which was preventing the the soil on that side of the house from getting moisture and breathing and suggested that we rip up the concrete, place down some weave-mat, then pebbles and then water the area once a week which would allow the soil to breathe and also re-moisturise the dried out clay soil.
I am intrigued by the weave-mat approach (as the wall fixing one doesn't appear to attack the cause) and would like to know if anyone has done something similar, or if anyone can recommend a Hydraulic Engineer (or someone similar) who could come out and sample the soil around the house and setup a mechanism for us to monitor the clay soil and hydrate if necessary.
Your help is greatly appreciated.!!
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