From: marshall@marshall.cs.unc.edu (Jonathan Marshall)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
Subject: Foundation pier question
Date: 13 Apr 92 01:55:55 GMT
Followup-To: misc.consumers.house
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

I have some questions about the masonry piers that are used as supports
underneath some houses.

BACKGROUND.  We're planning to buy a house in Carrboro, NC, and we've just
had it inspected; closing is scheduled for about 2 weeks from now.

The house has a crawl space underneath, surrounded by a cinderblock wall.
The structure is supported on top of the wall by several beams that
traverse the width of the house.  Each beam is made of pairs of 2x10s
nailed together.  The beams rest on the walls and on several masonry piers
in between.  The piers are made of cinder blocks and ordinary red bricks,
stacked in a square cross-section about a foot or two wide.  They are
about 5 feet high.

PROBLEM 1.  Our inspector discovered some possibly serious problems with
three or four of the piers: they are "dry-stacked," with no mortar between
the blocks.  (Some other piers under the house are mortared.)  He says
that the building code requires the blocks in all the piers to be
mortared.  How serious is this problem?  Is this in fact a building code
violation?  If so, why exactly does the code require that the blocks be
mortared?

I presume that each beam will have to be supported on jacks while the
piers underneath it are torn down and rebuilt with mortar.  Is that
correct?  If so, what are some of the details of this process that we
should look out for?

The sellers of the house say that they have talked to a builder who
suggests that simply plastering the outside of each pier with stucco or
concrete would be OK.  They are proposing to do that instead of rebuilding
the piers.  Would this remedy satisfy the building code?  Is it safe to do
that?

I also noticed that two piers (ones against the outside wall) were covered
by a thin layer of concrete.  Is it possible that these are also faulty
piers?

PROBLEM 2.  The second problem that our inspector found involves the
wooden spacer boards on top of each pier, underneath the beams.  The
spacers for each pier are a different thickness, to compensate for the
slightly different heights of each pier, so that the house rests levelly.
The inspector says that the building code requires each spacer board to be
a solid piece, running the full width of the beam and the length of the
pier.  However, in our case several of the spacers do not meet this
requirement.  Some are just small wooden blocks arranged next to each
other.  On one pier, the full weight of the house is supported on a couple
of wooden shims less than an inch wide.  Of course, these shims look
pretty squashed.

My questions are:  Again, how serious is this problem?  Is this in fact a
building code violation?  If so, why exactly does the code require solid,
full-width, full-length spacers?  Is the correct remedy to jack up the
beams and insert new spacers?

Many thanks for any replies.  I'll collect the responses and post a digest
to this newsgroup.

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=									=
=   Jonathan A. Marshall			  marshall@cs.unc.edu   =
=   Department of Computer Science					=
=   CB 3175, Sitterson Hall						=
=   University of North Carolina		  Office 919-962-1887	=
=   Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175, U.S.A.		     Fax 919-962-1799	=
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