Basement Beam Pocket Repair

[Wiredguitarist]

I've been an avid reader of these forums for over a year now but this will be my first post. I thank the community for providing such a valuable resource to fellow engineers.

Attached are two photos where beam pocket failure occurs in the basement of my house. These offset stacked beams are used to support the step-down living room above. Since there are no corner bars present, I have to assume the contractor used plain concrete with minimal reinforcing.

I'm looking for some guidance on repair techniques. I would assume that drilling and setting some corner bars with epoxy would allow a new corbel to be formed from the corners and support the beams more adequately. I have some concerns with finding a contractor that will be able to build the formwork and pour concrete into a confined area. Another solution might be to embed anchors on both walls extending from the corner and provide a steel shelf angle to pickup the beam?

As a recent grad, very little was covered in my coursework on concrete repair so I don't have much reference to work from on this. All ideas for repair are welcome, thank you.

 

[Wiredguitarist]

Here is an additional photo for the other beam pocket.

 

[chicopee]

About a flushed and bolted square or rectangular steel column fitted with a base plate. 3/8 thick would be more than sufficient.

 

[pmblair]

Its hard to tell from just pictures the extent of the spalling. In the second picture if its only 1/2" to 1" deep, more then likely it was poor construction, and/or poor form work and/or a bad mix design.

In the first picture it looks like the corner spalled off, and say if its a 12" x 12" area then probably is an unreinforced corner, but also some poor construction going on. With out knowing the reactions, and other such info its difficult to pin it down.

But, makings some very vague assumptions, I would post shore the beam in the first picture, chip out 90 degree edges in all directions, so there isn't a shear slip plane, drill and epoxy corner bars, apply a binding agent, and pour back location with a epoxy-grout mix.

Second picture if it is only 1/2" of spalling, not sure i would bother, but you could apply a bonding agent, and patch it with expoy-grout mix.