Endgame: Have a sound foundation and ideally get everything waterproofed down the road. Also sorry if this turns into a wall of text. I can get longwinded. Or long-fingered? Bad phrasing. Awkward.Imgur album with relevant photos attached.I recently bought my first house in northern Kentucky at 27, specifically with the intention of fixing up as much myself as possible and making this an awesome home. I'm fairly handy, but definitely not a professional (though countless hours of centralized youtube videos and endless tutorials go a long way). I'm not afraid to tackle huge projects but I don't want to absolutely kill myself taking on more work than I should.That being said, I want to replace a foundation wall myself! What a ridiculous notion.So this house was built in 1965 and has a block foundation. One wall (14') is bowing in about 1.5/2 inches. I've gotten a quote for $4,000 from a reputable foundation repair company who is only recommending a carbon-fiber taping to prevent further bowing. They did the typical presentation that most of these companies will do, where they presented a three-minute video of their proprietary product and said it was the "best option on the market, and we're the only ones who have this." Likely story.Anyway, I've read into the process of carbon-fiber taping bowing block foundations and it looks like it feasibly could stop any more bowing due to the vertical tensile strength of the tape. And $4000 is way cheaper than I expected any repairs to cost. The company has a guarantee that there will be no further bowing, but made it VERY clear that they do not guarantee anything about sheering. So if the wall still wants to move and moves as one unit, I'm SOL.What is your experience/opinion with carbon-fiber tape treatment of foundation walls? It seems like the process is just a matter of cleaning and scoring the blocks then affixing the carbon-fiber tape. Can this dependably be done as a DIY project?Side note, don't worry: I'm getting at least a few more professionals out to look at this before pulling the trigger on anything. More opinions can either provide more confusion or more clarity, but either way I understand the necessity.So that's one option for repair. But then I started thinking about the bigger picture. There is a small concrete porch on the outside of this wall that I am ultimately planning on removing and replacing with a wrap-around deck to the backyard. When I remove that porch (next 1-2 years but could be sooner), it will make repairing/replacing that entire foundation wall (and potentially waterproofing) significantly more feasible.Once the porch is out of the way, excavation and placing a waterproof barrier on a new wall would be absolutely ideal. And if I can prevent putting a several thousand dollar bandaid on something that I plan getting replaced in the next few years, that would be ideal.If I end up waterproofing the basement with an exterior barrier and drainage system, would it make more sense to just replace this wall (once the porch is removed) while going through that process?A few months ago there was a post from another redditor (that I can't track down, no matter how hard I try) where him and his father replaced an entire block foundation wall in his basement. It 1,000,000% did not look easy, but it did look doable and fairly straight forward. They placed several hydraulic house jacks under their beams by the wall (after consulting a structural engineer) and starting demoing. The balls on that guy. But I know my balls are comparable to his.And this is where I got the insane idea of attempting to replace this wall myself.I understand that everyone here will likely tell me replacing this wall myself is a risky endeavor, but it is nothing compared to the amount of trepidation I would have going into such a project without being 110% prepared to tackle it. My biggest concern is getting the mortar/concrete filling for the blocks to the right consistency (wet enough, but not too wet) to ensure a proper set. Because if you fuck that up, there's no real going back without starting over.On a scale of 1-10: How difficult/stupid/insane is it to demo the porch and attempt to replace this foundation wall myself? (After consulting a structural engineer, of course)I come to reddit for anecdotal advice, which I really value. I also fully intend to get professional advice. via /r/DIY https://ift.tt/2GJrV3d
