A Sinking House for Dangerous Dummies

Jacking up a foundation

We're pretty sure that, when it comes to topics such as "How to Repair a Sinking House,"¹ any online questions are pretty much of the "Who do I hire?" variety. Face facts: even a small house weighs as much as a fully-loaded eighteen-wheeler, and that doesn't include the foundation. Why some freelancer as clueless as returning DotD Melanie Fleury thought she could give someone directions by cribbing info from a contractor site is beyond us, but she did just that at HomeSteady.com.

Here is where someone with at least a passing knowledge of home-building would insert words to the effect of,

Do not try this at home!!!!

Melanie, on the other hand thought she could walk us through it... the five-time awardee's only "tip" or "warning"?

"This requires at least a week of work. If you don't have the time, contact a contractor."

No duh, idiot! Let's start with some of Melanie's more idiotic instructions: "Measure how much sinking your house has done. Using a laser beam [she means a laser level], make a horizontal line across the mortar. Measure the depth your house has begun sinking by measuring from the beam of where the mortar is supposed to be to where it has dropped. Basically, you are measuring from the ground to where the mortar is. " What mortar, you idiot (we think her one example was a brick house, but who knows)? and why would you measure from the ground: it may have sunk, too! And then there's "Dig holes 5-6 feet apart along the area where the sinking has occurred. Use a shovel to make sure that the holes are dug as deep as the home's footing or foundation. "

Is that as opposed to using a teaspoon? Whatever. Those two passages should be enough to give you an idea of Fleury's qualifications for jacking up a foundation, so we'll dispense with more quotes from her post. We will, though, outline her order of operations.

• ...attach a helical pier to the "foundation wall"...
• Attach hydraulic jacks to each bracket.
• Lift the sinking part of the home...

Umm, sure, find yourself some helical piers and a hydraulic jack – maybe you can use the one from the family SUV!

In reality, Fleury glossed over the following in her sole reference:

"If you have foundation failure, the biggest problem that you will have (other than the expense) is finding a contractor."

Yes, folks, this is not a do-it-yourself job, the fact that you can't buy helical piers and the requisite foundation jack at your local Lowe's notwithstanding. That, however, was clearly of no concern to our Dumbass of the Day, as long as she got her stipend!

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_5904204_repair-sinking-house.html

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