Restumping - Has Anyone Poured Concrete

[Metal Head]

Stumps larger than the conventional 100mm (4") square concrete stumps?

As you will be aware from previous posts on the subject of restumping that we (the wife & I) presently have a complaint in against our previous restumper with the Building Commission. Although he put in additional concrete footing one metre deep we are still having servere cracking in our house.

Thus I am interest to know if anyone has done or had concrete stumps/footing put under a weatherboard house of a much larger size (i.e. 150mm square/round diameter) in order to stop movement of the walls, door frames, wooden flooring etc within the house?

We would be very appreciative of any advice that would help stop this ongoing problem we have had for over two years now.

Regards
MH

[echnidna]

going to a larger stump section won't affect movement issues.

the problem is more likely to be found to be the depth of the footing (or in a few instances the area of the footing). The footing needs to be on a firm base.

[dazzler]

Doesnt it rest on the soil classification as to the footings size

[echnidna]

yes

[UteMad]

Second that one on stump size...

Your problem is footings size and depth and the reactive nature of your soil...

Do you have water issues on your block or the complete opposite and super dry...

The earth moves when we have severe moisture changes and this causes the footings to shift...

This is all assuming you have sufficient amount of stumps to go with your bearer and joist sizes and arent suffering excess deflection



100 cop outs gees i should be a politicion


cheers utemad

[Metal Head]

Thanks lads for the replies. I was told the other week from a neighbour down the road that the area in which I live used to be a bog prior to developement. So given that the soil is very clay based may have something to do with it. However, having spoken to my neighbours either side of our property they don't appeared to have had such servere movement (cracking) as we have.

Q) Are brick/verneer homes (which have a large concrete slab as a foundation) less likely to suffer as much in this type of soil as weatherboards?

It may well be that we will have to have an engineer out to have the soil tested prior to anymore restumping is carried out.

Q) Could a pipe (e.g. storm water, sewerage) be broken (and unknown to us) also cause the movement we are having?

Cheers
MH

[Claw Hama]

You need a good structural engineer and a geotechnical report from a geotech firm. If your neighbours ar ok you should check your own block for starters. Is all your roof guttering and drainage working correctly or do you have overflowing downpipes etc with water running under your house. Is it dry or wet under your house? Is this problem worse in the dry or the wet?