Q&A 8 – Common Issues We Run Into While Remodeling
Welcome back. Alex Schenkar, Schenkar Construction Design Build here in Seattle. One of our Instagram followers wrote in with a great question, Alex, what is one of the common issues in existing homes today that we run into when we’re remodeling? It’s a great question and it’s bearing capacity. What does that mean? What is the condition of the existing foundation? There’s cracks, there’s differential settlement, many of the homes that turn of the century to 1930s, 40s, and 50s, have very unstable foundations that do not achieve the bearing capacity allowed in order for us to build a second story addition, and or remodel above. How do we do that? We need to augment the foundation to stabilize that. We do that by using a pipe pile method. It’s a scheduled [??? 0:41] steel pipe that we drive vertically down the face of the foundation and attach it with a bracket.