Cracked and Bowing Foundation Wall
Challenge
A building at a summer camp in Northwood, New Hampshire, was built in the 1950s. The cinder block foundation had been cracking and bowing for years. In 2020 the owner of the building called EFS for free inspection of the foundation. Our Design Specialist John Prince met with the homeowners and recommended installing PowerBraces on one side of the building. Our PowerBraces solved the foundation problems on the one side but the other side is still bowing and cracking.
Now toward the end of 2023, the homeowner was seeing the bowing and cracking were getting worse so they reached out to EFS again for another inspection. John Prince came out to the house again and inspected the other foundation wall. He looked at the foundation again to find a solution to stabilize that block wall. After his second inspection, John recommended the same solution to the other side of the foundation.
Solution
John recommended installing 9, 8' PowerBraces against the foundation wall.
Our installation team led by Ryan Champagne began by marking along the foundation wall where each PowerBrace will be installed. After we marked them all, the team began installing our bottom bracket against the block foundation. Next, we began installing the top brackets in between the floor joists. We have two top brackets that can be installed depending on how the floor joists move—the Bridge Bracket which spans between the two joists and the lever bracket which runs along multiple joists. These brackets are adjustable which allows us to tighten the PowerBrace. In this case, we used our Bridge Bracket to span between two joists to gain leverage to straighten the foundation wall over time. After the 9 PowerBraces were installed our team then tightened each of the brackets with a torque wrench until we reached a specific number. Over the next few years after installation, the PowerBraces will be retorqued to the same specifications to slowly straighten the foundation wall.
The owner of the buildings at the camp was very happy with the work that Erickson Foundation Solutions had provided them over the past couple of years. The owner said they would continue to call us for any foundation, waterproofing, concrete stabilization, or radon mitigation concerns.
Project Summary
Products Installed: PowerBraces
Design Specialist: John Prince
Crew Leader: Ryan Champagne
