Took me 11 days to repair my foundation
Bought 2 acres late last year for our first homestead. I'm spending the first year not growing anything and instead spending time on home repairs and infrastructure for the homestead after repairs such as chicken coop, garden beds, etc.
With the exception of alterations to the main water line done by my plumber neighbor I did this foundation repair myself in 11 days. Rushing at the end to beat an incoming storm.
We have cracks in the foundation letting a lot of water in the crawlspace and the ground was sloped into the home.
Not shown in the pictures is about 3 cubic yards of river rock around the 90 feet of foundation I repaired. 10 pronged pitch fork did a pretty good job of getting most of them. Shovel was much harder. Also a lot of plants and bushes pulled from behind the home.
Unhooked AC (I'm an HVAC tech) Dug down a little over 3.5 feet with a tractor backhoe. Repaired the 4 major cracks by chipping them out a bit wider and filling with hydraulic cement. Painted all exposed foundation with 3 coats of rubber sealant. Added dimple mat over the top. Used 4 inch congregated perforated pipe in a sock at the base of the foundation as a French drain. Solid 4 inch pipe sent out the back of the house down hill as drain. Covered all perforated pipe with #57 gravel. Used about 2 cubic yards. Dimple mat fixed to the foundation with concrete nails. And mat topped with manufactures recommend flashing again mounted with concrete nailed. Sealed all nails and flashing with rubber sealant. Backfilled and tamped dirt down as I backfilled. Hooked AC back up.
Unfinished work-
While I properly sloped the back and side of the house. It's currently backfilled 1 brick high instead of stopping at the top of the foundation. I'm expecting settling and will reslope and remove from siding once it's settled if it's still on the brick.
Back needs sloping. Again waiting for settling.
Need to clean up the area and throw some grass seed. Add some rock around
Mistakes made-
While driving the tractor close to the house to help tamp dirt once it was tall enough I hooked and ripped off a shutter.
Dimple mat flashing is supposed to be mounted every 8 inches with concrete nails. With my foundations 55-year-old concrete. The nails sometimes were just taking chunks out of the concrete even though I was using a concrete nail gun. so I started going every one to 1 and 1/2 ft depending on if the concrete failed to take the nail. I should have just gone to the store and got a masonry bit to pre-drill the holes for the nails as the lack of nails caused the flashing to heavily warp in the Sun causing large gaps that were difficult to seal with the rubber sealant so I had to fill them with caulk.
Comments also mentioned my gravel should have been wrapped in fabric and will clog at some point. I may have to dig this up and redo the French drain in a few years
This is the largest project I've ever taken on and had no experience doing so. I got to say this was a miserable process. I had really long days trying to get this done in time. But after looking at some quotes for repairs from contractors. I felt it was definitely worth my time to do. I had a month off for some parental leave after we had our second child and I used that time to do this. I spent probably $2,500 to 3,500 in materials as long as you don't count the tractor... If you're picky and do count it, it only added $45,000. But I had enough upcoming projects. I felt it was worth getting a tractor. Once we save up some more money I'm going to use it to put in a fence. Part of that $45,000 was also a post hole Driller.
Even including the tractor I came in significantly cheaper than the quotes I got for repairing the foundation. While I didn't reinforce the areas with the cracks with pylons underneath. At the moment they are not causing damage to the house. And by removing the water that's getting under the house this should stop them from getting worse. Several of the bids I got for repairing the foundation including things like encapsulating the crawl space or putting pylons under the areas of the foundations that were cracked. But no one recommended to waterproof the outside which would just lead to more cracks in the future as water got under the foundation and allowed the house to settle more. I'm not willing to pay around 70k for repairs that aren't going to stop additional damage in the future.
TL:DR; repaired cracks and waterproofed my foundation in 11 days instead of spending $70,000 for repairs that wouldn't have prevented future damage.