Basement wall leaning

[dneck37]

Hey guys,

I have a cinder block foundation in an addition to my house. It has some thin hairline cracks going horizontally going about 2 or 3 blocks across on the bottom of the blocks on the 2nd and 3rd rows from the top. These cracks weep during heavy rains and had effervescence build up all over them. This is also the wall directly under my back door with a concrete patio infront of it so no excavation possible. I already removed all the old paint from the wall with a grinder (fun and dusty job) and am going to seal the cracks with epoxy and paint over the whole wall with drylok extreme. Today though I read about how bad horizontal cracks are and checked the wall for plumbness(is that a word idk). The wall seems to be leaning in 0.5 inches from top to bottom. The wall is 6 ft tall by 8 feet wide. Should I do anything about this lean? Carbon fiber straps or call in a professional? This addition was built in the 80s so the lean didn't happen very quickly, the patio was done in the 90s I think. Am I worrying too much about the lean or is it a sign of bad things to come?

Thanks in advance for the help!

[sonofsven]

No, don't worry about the plumbness, or lack thereof.

[lthenderson]

Sealing your cinder block foundation from the inside with drylok is probably going to be ineffective at best and at worse, seal the moisture inside your block wall creating faster degradation at worst. Unless the crack is very wide and has ideal bonding preparation, you won't be able to get enough epoxy in it to do any good and the hydrostatic water involved will still be able to cause it to leak. In order to fix the problem, you need to fix the water from getting outside the wall to start with which means looking at your concrete patio first. Is it sloped away from your home or is it funneling water up next to your foundation. It should be sloped away from your home and I'm guessing it isn't funneling the water away. Until you fix that problem, you can only mask the problem from the inside until you can't anymore.

After solving the water issue, buckled cinder block walls can be fixed but that means some invasive digging on the outside as well as drilling holes through the cinderblock walls to run anchors through to the outside to pull things plumb. Again, since you are adding more holes to the walls, you will want to solve your water issue first.

[Fishindude]

Sealing your cinder block foundation from the inside with drylok is probably going to be ineffective at best and at worse, seal the moisture inside your block wall creating faster degradation at worst. Unless the crack is very wide and has ideal bonding preparation, you won't be able to get enough epoxy in it to do any good and the hydrostatic water involved will still be able to cause it to leak. In order to fix the problem, you need to fix the water from getting outside the wall to start with which means looking at your concrete patio first. Is it sloped away from your home or is it funneling water up next to your foundation. It should be sloped away from your home and I'm guessing it isn't funneling the water away. Until you fix that problem, you can only mask the problem from the inside until you can't anymore.

After solving the water issue, buckled cinder block walls can be fixed but that means some invasive digging on the outside as well as drilling holes through the cinderblock walls to run anchors through to the outside to pull things plumb. Again, since you are adding more holes to the walls, you will want to solve your water issue first.

This is good advice !