QUESTION ABOUT CONCRETE BLOCK FOUNDATION 2

[QUEST_7850]

Good afternoon. Not sure I'm on the right website or forum for this question, so if not, please point me in the right direction.

I recently located a structure made of concrete blocks sitting in the woods. I've been told that it's 20 years old. It has no roof or floor. No one knows what the ultimate plan was for it (garage, English basement, etc). Apparently, they got part-way and abandoned the project.

The walls show some cracking but I'm not sure if it's weathering or something else. It's a square with walls 30 feet in length and around 10 feet high. There is no evidence of a Footer. In fact, it actually looks like the walls were erected right on the ground. The soil here is very rocky with very little topsoil. There is no evidence of any attempt to help water drain away from the structure. Trees have grown all along the walls, both inside and out. It's on the side of a steep slope so water flows down-hill towards the structure. Two of the walls are lower than the ground. Those two walls are separated from the dirt by a deep trench. Water flows into the trenches and collects at the bottom. Someone dug a fire pit in the center of the structure. Water flows into the pit and I've been told it seeps out towards the walls.

I've attached two photos showing the structure and trees around it. Attached is a diagram showing that two walls have a trench on the outside where water and debris collect. Finally, I've attached a diagram showing how I think water flows and seeps around the walls.

What I'm trying to understand is whether this structure can be saved. If several think it can be, then I'll hire a local enginner to check it before I make an offer on the place. But I don'w want to waste an engineer's time and my money if you all think this thing is beyond salvage.

So what do you all think . . . is this structure salvageable?

If so, can someone just take a wild guess at potential repair costs? Are we talking around $1000, $5K, 410K, $20K

Other questions:

1) Since the structure has no load on it like walls, flooring, roof, furniture, etc, how can someone tell if it's still solid enough to build on?

2) If there are no Footers or if water has been getting at the Footers for 20 years, are those walls still safe to build another story or two on?

3) Might tree roots have damaged the Footers/Base beyond repair?

4) If an engineer wanted to examine Footers/base . . . would he have to look at both sides of the footer/Base . . . inside and outside? If so, how would you check the Footers/base on the outside of the two walls that have trenches next to them? Would you have to dig them out?

Thanks in advance

JQ

 

[jerseyshore]

If someone hired me to look at this I would need it to be cleaned up a bit to really evaluate the condition. That includes digging a few holes to verify footing size and condition.

Where you have retaining walls it's critical to see the rebar type spacing and condition as well.

Unless it looked really really good I don't think I'd want to risk putting my seal of approval on something like this honestly.

 

[TLHS]

This forum is theoretically for discussion amongst engineer rather than questions from non-engineers. This is super weird, though, so I'm kind of entertained.

How cheap is this land that a partially constructed 20 year old set of walls in a random layout is the deciding factor?

At a cost basically everything is salvageable, it's just a question of whether it's worthwhile. Your problem here is that you've got undocumented construction that has been exposed to the world for 20 years without maintenance. You don't know the original intent, so even if you assumed it was built correctly and was still in good condition, you don't know if it's suitable for what you'd want to use it for.

With old stuff, we can often rely on the fact that it's worked for however long it has been standing. So even if there isn't documentation, it is presumably somewhat fit for service. This hasn't been doing anything and you can't assume that it's okay. Someone would have to be comfortable coming in and taking responsibility for this and for telling you what it's suitable for. That's going to be a huge judgement call from their standpoint. How likely it is that someone would own this is going to depend on what common practice and requirements are in your area. If this looks like every other building a local engineer sees in your area every day and it's in good condition, they might be super comfortable. If that's not the case, then who knows?

How much is the opportunity worth to you? Nobody here will be able to tell you the risk on this without knowing much more detail than we will reasonably have. So you kind of just have to decide whether you want to pay for someone to review it or if that's too much to spend.

Any report you get is going to have a bunch of caveats, all of which will have costs. How much is being able to use this going to save you in costs?

Personally, my initial assumption on something sitting in a forest with no documentation is that it's more likely to be a liability than an asset. It's going to be something that requires demolition, significant work, and will cost me time in figuring out. There's also a regulatory risk beyond your control. Even if your contractor or engineer says you can save it, your local permitting authority might have a bunch of requirements they decide to impose. Have you checked your local jurisdiction to see if a permit was pulled for this work originally? There might be records there. If not, it's likely that you'll have to permit it retroactively if you decide to complete it.

That being said, engineers are inherently conservative. There's a chance that this is all fine. Unfortunately nobody here is going to really be able to put a number on that.

If you're actually interested in doing this, I would suggest calling around to local engineers. You want to find a small firm or sole proprietor that does residential work, probably. Call a couple to gauge level of interest and cost, tell them you want to pay them for a site trip out to look at it and to help you decide whether this is a good idea and what might be involved going forward. See what they want to charge you for that and decide if it's worth it for you. You can try clarifying that you don't want an evaluation upfront, but rather a general understanding on whether they think it's even worth doing an evaluation and what would be involved in that evaluation.

If they think a more complete evaluation is worthwhile, do that before you buy anything.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

I don't think this is the forum for me to comment.

I am building a workshop details in the hobbies forum.