Gorilla Wall Braces

I have designed a lot of basement wall walers, usually W4x13's, that are very similar to these braces to reinforce badly bowed walls.

The backside of the waler or brace needs to have non-shrink grout to create uniform contact with the wall.

Calculating the force at the top is relatively easy. Typically I'll add the required blocking & fastening to transfer the loading into the floor joists.

Awesome.
I was specifically wondering about the mechanism that allows them to periodically crank this thing to gradually take the bowing out of the walls.

Looks like it would get installed in a leaning position before the correcting force was applied?

I doubt they are able to actually move the wall back over time.

There are a lot of these crank-a-wall-back-straight type of "solutions" out there, usually utilizing some type of soil anchors & deadmen or helical piles driven into the backfill. Most are very shady and have no research, calculations, or code compliance to reference.

I do a lot of repairs of all sorts and 99% of the time movement is not in the required scope. Never have (or will) I tell someone to use a brace and/or anchor to pull a wall back straight over time. It's a great sales pitch, but I'm in the stabilizing and reinforcing business. If someone wants their wall to be straight again they can call a mason.

A steel brace/ waler goes in vertical tight to the largest deflection location, then the NS grout is placed above and below to create that continuous contact. Typically they are placed somewhere between 2ft - 4ft o/c depending on how bad the wall is.

If you want the wall straightened, it needs to be excavated. Might as well waterproof it at that point. Then use carbon fiber strips in lieu of the soldier beams assuming the wall is adequately connected to the floor system.

If you want the wall straightened, it needs to be excavated.

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Do it the right way, got it. I was thinking these things were too good to be true. The website mentioned they were "designed" by a PE...

Not to mentioned cracking these things against an existing floor joist, especially if you're perpendicular to the joist, just seems like it could cause a bunch of secondary problems if not adequately braced.

StrEng007 said:

Do it the right way, got it. I was thinking these things were too good to be true.

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That is usually the case with these systems. There is always some issue - immediately obvious or once you get into it a bit deeper.