Originally Posted by StevieC
Originally Posted by PimTac
I've been in plenty of old houses with basements, most of them two stories and the mid floor supports were just solid wood posts on concrete blocks sitting on the floor. In those days the concrete was poured thick. The supports were 6x6 rough. The only consideration was to secure the posts for earthquakes.
Yeah old building standards were something in terms of concrete thickness.
In our current house which is 1940's the basement floor is a foot thick. We had to break the floor to to change the drains and add a back flow water drain valve for insurance. They also buried the drains and water lines quite deep. 2ft past the 1ft of concrete. It makes reaching the clean-out for the back water valve almost impossible when I go to check it.
When we moved the drain line in a section of the basement at my friends house (built in the 2,000's) it was about 6 inches of concrete, crushed stone, and then the pipe was right there. Their concrete also for the floor was easy on to go through with the jack hammer whereas mine was very intensive and took hours because it was super hard. I had no crushed stone, just sand and broken pieces of glass, stone and bricks.
I hear ya. Some of that old concrete can be a real bugger to break through.
Our family home, built in 1928 has the support posts I described above. It's been through a couple of mag 7 and a few mag 6 earthquakes. The house never suffered any structural damage, just plaster cracks which are expected.
