Lake Home Stabilized for Potential Addition, Merrimac, MA

Tuesday, October 19th, 2021 by Travis Kellogg

Challenge

Jennifer N. of Merrimac, Massachusetts wanted to install an addition on the second floor of her 118-year-old lake home. Jennifer has been living in her home for 4 years and would like to see her options to put an addition that extends the second floor. The only concern she had was whether her home could withstand the weight of the addition. She called Erickson Foundation Solutions about a free inspection. After setting up an appointment, Design Specialist Michael Bradley arrived and proceeded to inspect the home. During his inspection, Michael observed three different areas under the home that are difficult to access. All three areas can only be accessed by crawling through an egress at the front of the home or crawling under narrow gaps under the porch. All of the access points have less than 3-1/2' of clearance under the home which creates a challenge for the crew to get to the areas they need to. The first area is a 12'x25' crawlspace that is only 3-1/2' tall. The next area is an 18'x19' dirt floor basement that only has an 18"-30" clearance. The third and final area is a 12'x22' enclosed porch that has an 18"-22" gap from the ground to the floor joists.

This project needed space for heavy equipment to install the Helical Piers. The crew would need to bring a Skid Steer to the project to drive the helical piers into the ground using a hydraulic handheld device. To use this machine the crew would need at the minimum 6-10' of clearance.

Solution

After Michael's full inspection, he found that the foundation of the home would need to be bolstered up to prepare for the weight of the second-floor addition. Michael created a proposal and it included: Helical Piers, Geolock Wall Anchors, Smart Jacks, and Clean Space. The proposal included 6 Helical Piers with 7' extensions, 3 Geolock Wall Anchors with 12"x18" wall supports and 16"x16" anchor plates, 9 SmartJacks in a difficult access area, and a 25'x12' Clean Space Encapsulation. Michael explains each product function in great detail to Jennifer so she can understand what each product does. Michael reviewed the proposal with Jennifer to see if she had any questions or concerns.

The crew assigned to this project was Ed Nadreau's team. This project took 7 days to fully complete. Ed and his team arrive at Jennifer's home and began installing SmartJacks under the home. Installation Specialists Anthony Correa, Jay Mason, and Nate Atkinson installed 9 SmartJacks in the crawlspace. After they finished the SmartJacks they split into two teams to install the Geolock Wall Anchors and the CleanSpace Crawlspace Encapsulation. After both teams completed those tasks they came back together and began to install the Helical Piers. The team installed the 6 Helical Piers on the outer edge of the porch with aid from the Skid Steers hydraulic lines.

Before the job was complete, Ed had to contact an inspector to come out to the property and evaluate the work that the crew did. The inspector was able to verify that the work done by Ed and his crew did strengthen the foundation to enable the installation of a second-level addition.