Buing old house with basement water damage?

Question

Is it expensive to fix water damage to concrete foundation of a house? I am purchasing a fixer-upper, that has a full basement and some damage to the foundation(mainly under the basement window areas) You can tap into the walls and the water damaged areas of concrete just fall out. Can I just knock out the damaged areas and relplace with new concrete? The problem was there was grass all the way up to the foundation on one side of the house, replaced by concrete about 7 years ago.

Answer 1

I would advise that you have a concrete business come in and look at it, and give you an estimate. You might be able to tackle this project yourself, but being the foundation.. any errors should be minimized if at all possible. A failing foundation will negate any improvements made to the rest of the home.

If you have any areas of foundation that are cracked, or uneven, then a "mudjacking" company might be your best bet.

Good Luck

Answer 2

Acquiring a fixer-upper is fine, BUT what you describe is in danger of collapse! You cant just throw a band-aid on a foundation problem. It must be taken down to the footer (while holding the house up). Not what I would call a "D I Y" job.
From watching "This Old House" a foundation repair can run into 10's of thousands of Dollars. If you want to "Flip" the property, better have real big money in the checking account!

Answer 3

This is beyond a fixer-upper. This damage might be the straw that broke the camels back.

To do this properly you'd better have a contractor come in and redo the entire basement walls, they'd have to dig the entire foundation up, replace or install tile for proper drainage, back fill after replacing all the damaged blocks and resealing the basement walls.

This is going to add up to thousands of dollars in costs, I would venture to guess anywhere from $3000.00 to $8000.00 in costs and you'll be lucky. I would never have bought a place like this without them remodeling first or having this amount in escrow for the work.

The house may have to be jacked up also, lot's of work.

Answer 4

You can attempt to replace the wall but sadly, if the damamge is severe enough to crumble the concrtete then there is SERIOUS risks of foundation collapse at some time.