Foundation Piling repair, sleeve with concrete

Maybe someone here is familiar with foundation / piling repairs? Our 40 year old Florida coastal home sits on marine-grade wooden pilings that are getting old. Few of them, where wood meets the ground are getting too soft. Wood is slowly rotting due to moisture.

People in the neighborhood have addressed this a few different ways - a plastic sleeve that gets filled with concrete, or polymer resin.

I was thinking about digging into the ground a few feet, putting a few rebar rods (galvanized?) around the damaged wood piling, and filling the sleeve with concrete.

This will be a DIY job, and I will have to bust through the concrete pad in a few spots. Neighbor was quoted $2K per piling to do this with resin.

Is anyone familiar with this kind of repair? Tips or tricks? Other options to consider?

 

Move.

 

Unless something cataclysmic were to happen - never

 

The wood won't stop rotting, so why would you do a temporary fix to a house you want to stay in?

Shore up the structure, remove old piling and pour a concrete piling with the proper mix

 

Do you have wood pilings sitting on concrete footers or on the ground? You mentioned both. Is there any trouble with the local code compliance people if you do this yourself? Permits? It sounds more like a wood rot problem than a footing problem.

 

Our last house in AK was on pilings. When the wood strted to rot above the permafrost, they dug down a couple of feet and cut off the rot and then put steel pipe on top of the cut off wood piling. It was a diy job. I don't know how well it would translate to FL soil. What about removing all the pilings and pour a slab with pillars for support. With the sand soil, I am glad that our FL house is on a slab.

 

Your talking about fixing something like this?

https://coastalfoundationsolutions.com/wood-piling-repair/

The issue is oxygen near the surface allowing microbes to eat the wood. Sounds like you support the the structure with braces..dig out several feet and pour some concrete and use a bracket on the good part of the wood. I would go to the local home center and ask those guys how deep and how wide the concrete needs to be. Probably 3-5 ft deep and a 12-16 sono tube would work.

 

No way I would trust a $14 an hour home center employee with info on how to build my piling footers. Form and pour large footers, 2'or 3' wide.

 

Yeah, that is what locals tend to do. looks like I will need to find a local concrete company and ask around.

 

This seems to be the usual approach:

https://shorelineplastics.com/snapjacket/

 

Use epoxy coated rebar, not galvanized.

 

Concrete is just a very hard sponge, water penetrates it. Encasing rotten wood in concrete will just make the wood rot slower. I'm in Canada so there's a slightly different climate, but here you are not allowed to pour concrete around a wood post. Support around the piling, cut out the rotten wood, pour concrete in sonotube (I've just seen fibreglass rebar for the first time- I would use that). Put a galvanized bracket into/onto the concrete, bolt to what remains of the original piling.

 

This
Cut the concrete slab around each piling, to allow for new concrete footings to be set, with the correct rebar. If you want to do it yourself, do one, two, or three at a time.

 

I've seen this kind of destruction, @YamahaRick. I own our family's previously frequently flooded Mississippi riverfront home. Planning, perseverance, commitment, and hard work is essential when fighting Mother Nature.

I got tired of having to sandbag every few years at my folks home, in 1993. No one who ends up owning this property in the future will ever have to do this.

 

@Once a Wanker.. , just to be clear, I wasn't questioning your ability to tackle a similar situation that Alex has on his hands.

For 99.99% of folks out there, they should never ever consider this a "DIY" job. Even in the WERA BBS world, I'd say 75% would apply ... certainly including myself. IMO, this is a job where you should have a PE (Professional Engineer) certify a design, and make sure the guy/company completing the job has good liability insurance coverage. Yes, probably overkill in 80% of these types of cases, but, if it fails ... will ~your~ insurance cover the loss?

 

Got any pics?

 

This is what I did when I built my deck
Frost line where I live is 48" so the sonotubes are at least that

 

There are times when you have to seek professional help, if you cut your hand off do you superglue it back on? This is the foundation for your house. Will you ever need to sell this house? Not with DIY foundation repairs. As YamahaRick pointed out your insurance will not cover your mistakes. Stop and get some professional help, it will be cheaper in the long run.

 

Homes adjoining a body of water often have many unique issues @Alex_V may be dealing with.

One might be a very non-traditional homeowners insurance situation. Most of the common insurers no longer insure FL homes within a set distance of water. This leads to many various levels of insurance carried, especially by those without home mortgages.

Another obstacle to affordable professional remedies may be imposing governmental and municipal regulations and 'hoops' contractors are required to deal with. Often a homeowner doing their own work is sometimes not required to comply with all of the same levels of municipal and governmental oversight. This is something I have become quite well familiar with, in the 58 years our family has owned a house on the riverfront. I have also consulted with both structural and civil engineers to advise me regarding issues I was seeking information and answers to.

Alex, you seem like you are doing your homework researching your options, and sound comfortable doing most of the work yourself, including renting a concrete saw to cut your slab around your current wood piers to allow for excavation of new footings. I know of folks who's self-accomplished projects exceed the quality and structural standards of professionally built projects. I'm also confident you are aware there might come a time when mother-nature will put to a test whatever you install. If not, potential future owners value impressive appearing foundations on costal waters.

Good luck with your project however you decide to proceed with it. I hope one day you might come back to this thread and post before, during and after photos. I enjoy learning about things like this myself. Sounds like a place well worth your efforts to preserve it.