Historic House

Allegan, Michigan

Concrete-Contractor

Story

Kent Companies was hired by an Allegan, Michigan-based remodeling contractor to devise a support repair for a 150 year old house.  As a historic structure, all repairs were approved by the Michigan Historical Preservation Commission.  Once Kent worked with the parties involved to devise a repair technique that was approved by the commission, work began.

 

The house was built on what is known as a "Michigan basement".  This means that the basement in the house consists of little more than a dirt floor and rock walls loosely held together by grout.  In this case, the home had a shallow footing which allowed for easy access.  Unfortunately the footing was constructed of virtually one layer of rocks just under ground level.  The rocks were crudely mortared together which was of no help to the pier bracket.  The bricks on the rocks were of generally poor quality and were also held together by a very weak mortar.  The situation required professional help from an architect.  The architect studied the structure and suggested that Kent's crews change the pier spacing from 6 feet on-center to 4.5 feet on center.  Kent's Crews also added a 30 inch angle iron to increase the support surface since the footing added little lineal support.

 

The piers installed were driven to 24,000 pounds ultimate capacity.  The maximum load of the house was determined to be 12,000 pounds, giving the structure a 2 to 1 factor of safety. All piers were installed without vibration or undue pressures on the house structure.  Site disruption was very minimal.  The structural integrity of the home would not allow a lift of the 3/4 of an inch of nominal settlement.  But the repairs brought stability to the home and great relief to the owner.  Creative solutions like this are frequent for Kent Companies, a market leader in foundation repair.

Facts

  • Title: Historic house
  • Location: Allegan, michigan
  • Phase: Complete


Project Identification Number:

PP-CST-9C4E-48DD-04AA-0AF5-0


Status: Completed


Tags

  • single-family-housing
  • residential-foundation-stabilization


Project Credits:

Kent Companies, Inc.

Concrete-Contractor


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