I know… we added another floor of load. Only a small portion of the new top floor is over the old house, but the amount of retrofit below that portion is mind numbing.
IANASE (I am not a structural engineer), but in my area you have to engineer for 50 psf static snow loads, and the main structure holding up my house (2400 sq ft two-story colonial) is 5 concrete-filled lally columns under tripled-up 2x10’s. I don’t think that’s a concern in San Diego…
So it seems like overkill (unless that beam is spanning 20+ feet with no center support), but maybe the earthquake codes require it. We don’t worry about earthquakes here in the NE.
Boy, are you learning a TON on this house! Im sure the final product will be amazing, as all your homes have been stunners. It really makes me appreciate the simplicity of a small one story home, like the one we live in. We also don’t have to build for snow or earthquakes, but new construction is supposed to use hurricane ties to help hold the building together in very strong winds, which we DO get sometimes.
Oh Lordy, we are going down a rat hole with tge concrete cutting. Guy shows up this morning and recommends wall saw with 36" and 42" cutting blades to get down about 16" to 18" and we will save our stem walls with precision. $160/hr. My brain thinks “OK this should only take 2-3 hrs and then we can move on”
Big truck shows up with huge generator on trailer and Major Equipment. We are talking Big Boy tools here. It takes about 40 min to drill and set a big jig and track and 20 minutes to cut about 2 ft length. We only need 5 cuts. After 5 hrs we only have 4 deep cuts done and I’m still not clear how we get the concrete out between the cuts. I’m pretty sure it involves another 8 hrs of using our jackhammer
He’s coming back again tomorrow because they stop work at 3:30 or charge overtime. I will load some photos tomorrow morning. Right now I’m still covered in concrete dust from “supervising” which really translates to standing by trying to figure out why it is so complex and takes so long
I just loaded a group of photos that show all of the structural work that was done in basement and old garage. Probably only interesting to a select few 
A huge generator on a trailer is always a sign of huge troubles.
(We had a good laugh recently while driving by a construction site on a Sunday when no one was working. The workers suspended one of these huge generators up in the air dangling from a crane. Try to steal that! Apparently, a trick that works to keep bears from digging into food will work to keep thieves from stealing an expensive piece of equipment. )
Can you refresh my memory, I’m starting to lose track of some past details. How many cars are you going to be able to fit in the garage when it’s complete? Since you won and got your basement bathroom are you able to keep a sink in the laundry room? Are you going to have to put in a fire sprinkler system? Are you just about done with the structural support stuff?
Because I was able to keep 1/2 bath in basement I had to eliminate utility sink in garage and laundry sink. This is because I would have been required to upgrade water main to 1" and run new water pipes into house to support the demand. I’m already at the tipping point and I’m very worried about water pressure on top floor. I am just going to be very careful about disclosing that IF every single fixture is on in house at same time the shower in master bath will probably have low pressure, especially because we are required to put low flow shower heads in.
Setting engineered ceiling I joists today so we are getting close to completion on bottom floor. BUT we now have a full day of jack hammering out the cut concrete. Then we have to form and pour new slab floor in the lowered areas. Concrete pour scheduled for Thursday morning. This means we cannot get walls back up until Friday. Running one week behind schedule due to foundation elevation issue.
Building fake non load bearing walls today to close in 110 sq ft of’dead space’ in old garage. This closure got us a hair under the fire sprinkler sq ft threshold so we do not have to install fire sprinklers.
Because of walling off dead space AND the posts and beams added in old garage space we now have a new 2 car garage and 400 sq ft “workshop”. A 14 ft long by 8 ft wide space in workshop can be used to store a hobby car but buyer needs to set temporary 12" ramp to get car in and out over floor difference between garage and workshop
THE BIG MISTAKE
I’m going to try to explain the big issue that has caused us to go backward.
The concrete foundation guys recommended that we raise the foundation on the west side. Now that I look back to the details of plans, only the western wall outside the staircase was suposed to have a raised stem wall. The reason he recommended pouring the foundation taller on that side was because the dirt grade on that side of garage was about 14" high. We would have had to move out a lot of dirt to get that side of yard graded down to accomodate the doors on that side of garage. There is an exterior entrance door coming into the staircase from yard and there is a door for a closet that is accessed from outside for storage under staircase.
This picture shows how the foundation was poured. You can see the steps that were poured to step up to the floor level of staircase area
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■/photos/100771386@N05/28461267675/in/pool-2943085@N21
What everyonde failed to realize was that the plans showed a 8’ 4" ceiling height in new garage. Unfortunately this ceiling height was to the floor boards above, NOT the head height below the big ceiling joists. So, if you take 8’4" and subtract the 14" ceiling joist and 5/8" drywall on ceiling you get a head height inside garage of only about 7’ (although for some reason we have 7’6" which is barely going to let us have a standard garage door with opener). Then you have the issue where the steps are rising 14", so we are losing 14" over in the doorway to staircase which results in height at doorway of 70" (less than 6 ft high).
Of course this was not discovered until the guys got to the end of the garage and were trying to set the header and king studs for the garage doorway.
We are required to have a fire rated heavy door with spring hinges between the garage and the staircase. A standard door needs 82", not to mention the whole result was ridiculous. We thought through many scenarios, including building a wall on the edge of the staircase inside the garage (not on plans) and having the lower ceiling joists hang on that wall and then raising ceiling above garage step. The whole thing was getting ridiculous on how we were going to try to get it fixed.
No choice but to go back and cut out the concrete at the bottom of the staircase and get that whole area back to garage floor level. Here are the steps we are taking
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Take down all walls surrounding the area. Not that hard because they were not nailed and strapped in yet to the other walls.
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Jack hammer out the garage step and landing inside the garage. We were able to do this with the electric jack hammer we have ourselves. It was not hard because this step was poured separately from garage slab and foundation and was only tied in by some rebar dowels.
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Pay a fancy concrete cutting company to come with huge generator, compressor and 36" and 42" cutting blades. They were able to make deep precision cuts along footed stem walls so that our stem walls and anchor bolts stayed in place up at the raised area. We cut down 18" inside the raised foundation and cut the doorways out.
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Cut two 6" wide round bore holes in the corners so that we don’t have to ‘over cut’ into stem walls
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Now we have to jackhammer out all the concrete inside these deep cuts. We started with our electric jackhammer and it was obvious that it was going to take forever. So, we rented a big generator and an air jackhammer that weighs 90 lbs. The guys had to take 10 minute shifts, but all the concrete got out in 3 hours
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Now we have a giant pile of broken concrete that has to be hauled away somehow
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Concrete guys have to come back and form new slab floor in area (doweled into stem wall, but this is same as all the rest of the slab) and form a small new footing in the staircase area. We also need to set 4 new anchor bolts that were cut out of existing concrete into the poured area
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Pour new concrete into the area to get it finished.
At first the guys were saying… “we’ll just pour this new area when we pour the driveway in the future”. Ahhh… NO!!! We have to have this all finished so we can put the walls back up and set the ceiling joists. Our goal is to pass inspection for the bottom floor before we start building upper floors. I am worried that we might have done something slightly wrong and would have to tear everything apart. Not going to take that chance, I want inspection before we start gluing / setting the heavy plywood floor boards on top of the ceiling joists.
I loaded some photos that show the sequence of events.
I don’t know the total cost of this debacle just yet. However, the concrete guys say they are going to pay for the concrete cutting company and the new concrete that we need to pour
What a mess! Glad to hear that the concrete guys are stepping up and helping out with this one!
On paper, this all took one week to complete and officially it set us back one week. But in all honesty, most of the guys are still moving forward with many things that need to get done to get finalized for inspection. It took 2 guys away from the 6 man team.
The key issue is that I had scheduled electrician to come on Tuesday and Wednesday this week to wire everything for the inspection. I had to move him to Thursday/Friday and we will probably not have the last walls and ceiling joists up yet for him to run wire to the end of the garage for light switches, outside lighting, garage door opener, etc.
O lordy.
oy vey!
what a nightmare!
coralbrook, thanks for that explanation. Sounds like a nightmare to me, but I’m glad you understand it and got it fixed. It’s also terrific that the concrete guys are paying for the extra work.
I think I speak for all of us when I say, I can’t wait until the biggest problem is selecting the wall plates!!
5 days ago this was the end of the world, worst nightmare I could imagine. But everything is fixable if you put your head down and take each step at a time. Normally I can make decisions quickly. But this time i wanted to take my time and weigh all the options and call in some experts for advice. So we “wasted 2 days” waiting for the boss to make a decision on how to proceed.
Lots of Progress Today
Concrete got poured back into the staircase area. The guys were true to their promise and paid for the new concrete.
Templates and stringers cut for staircase - just need to wait for concrete to dry before we start building staircase
Giant garage door header beam installed - took 5 guys to pick it up and get it lifted into place
Electrician finished wiring everything for old garage, ceiling lights and dumbwaiter. He is coming back on Monday to finish all the wiring for new garage after staircase area completed
Shear panels installed on all walls
And, a funny thing happened. Yesterday, a guy shows up in a Home Depot truck and starts asking if we had any extra 2x12s delivered last week. We uncover all the wood for him and discover that we are the proud owners of twenty 2 x 12 20’ long lumber - pretty expensive stuff. I double checked everything and I did not order it. They put it on the truck and delivered it to the wrong place with my big order last week. So, this morning 2 other guys show up (one of them knows me from the store) and they have to pick it all up and move it to the back of the yard and strap it. Then the big forklift truck comes later and lifts it up and takes it up the street in the forklift. I have no idea who they belong to, but they must be missing some key pieces of lumber right about now
I loaded more photos
The guys paid for new concrete! Love it. Cementing their reputation in the business.
And I hope everyone at the local Home Depot now knows you as “that great honest lady”. Or maybe they already did!
Sorry for the setback and hoping this next week is smooth sailing.
Love the big hats on some of the guys.
For us in San Diego it has been very very hot. Last two days we have experienced high humidity which is unusual and makes us all miserable. Poor guys have been out in that direct sun. The front yard gets a wonderful ocean breeze, but the back of the house is blocked by that monstrosity next door and there is no breeze back there. I have been out in that direct sun also so yesterday I searched for a hat and could only come up with a sun hat with a nice ribbon and big bow in back. They laughed so hard when I showed up in my pretty sun hat