Quote:
Originally Posted by Chas H
The house is 95 years old for starters. Who knows how it was constucted.
Have you never heard of a raft foundation. You can do the search.
|
The only place I have ever seen a raft foundation is in structures 101. In over 30
years
in the business of designing and working with buildings. I have never seen a raft foundation in any type of building, or read about one.
The Imperial Hotel in Tokoyo by Frank Lloyd Wright was built on a raft foundation according to our architectural history class to resist earthquakes, but other than that I have never seen it.
If you would like to post just one example I will eat my words.
In a house that is ninety five years old, its quite likely there is no separate footing. Often if it had a brick or stone foundation they simply leveled the earth and started laying the brick or stone.
In this case its poured concrete and if the floor is not level that would support the idea of no separate footing too. I imagine if its not level it also may have been formed with individual boards instead of plywood. At that age plywood was probably not available in any case.
If there were a separate footing I would expect to see the floor pretty level, since it would follow that the footing was level to start with.
If it were built on a raft foundation, I would also expect to find a level floor too. Since its not level it probably was like my old house which had originally been built with a glorified crawl space and a dirt floor. Concrete was added later, perhaps when folks started having more stuff and needed a dry place to store things.
Getting a thin layer of anything to bond to a crumbling, pitted surface will be tricky at best. The bond will only be as good as what you are bonding to.
There may be some sort of an epoxy like product that will penetrate and bind the existing material and provide a finish. Dampness though may be a problem and prevent the applicatin of any finish type of material.