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Foundation advice
(lemmy.world)
Red is a concrete foundation. Black is rotting wood foundation that needs to be replaced.
Foundation issues suck. House has foundation issues. Most of the foundation will need to be replaced. Part of the house currently has a wood foundation which is rotting. There is an addition which has a concrete foundation. (See image above).
I know that the wood foundation can be replaced with a pier and post foundation. They can stabilize the house, dig and pour piers, then use metal posts to brace the house at the right height.
Is a pier and post foundation the only option? Is there a way to do a concrete foundation?
Edit: The image is a top down look at the perimeter of the house. The red part is a ~600 sqft addition. The black part is the main house.
TIL there is a such thing as a "wood foundation"..
Yes! Apparently you can still get them installed in the US They still can meet code! Crazy!
Pretty nice, since concrete is not too good for the environment as far as I've heard.
Building with wood and stone has been good to us for millennia. 👌
Well...except to meet code for wood foundation you must use treated wood (usually treated with some kind of copper arsenic) which is not great for the environment (both the production and usage).
Oh really. Well sh—
Chomated copper arsenate treated wood has been functionally banned in the US since 2003, and replaced with Alkaline copper quaternary or copper azole preservatives, which are generally safe, though I wouldn't go eating off a plate made from them or anything. The bigger issure with wood foundations is that even when treated they're necessarily going to have a limited lifespan -- wood still degrades from groundwater contact over time without insect or fungal attack, and water will wash the preservative agent out of the wood over time, eventually letting fungus and termites in.