Sorry in advance for the long post... My wife and I bought our first house last year and have come across a ton of previous homeowner diy repairs and mess ups. I am slowly going through and fixing things as I find them.
The most recent and so far biggest thing I have come across has me stumped. I will try to explain the best I can.. We have a sunroom on the back of our house that I assume was once a screened in porch or maybe just a covered porch. You walk out and there's a paver patio that is pretty uneven. When it rains i noticed that the water was starting to pool against the sunroom that the pavers butted up against. I noticed that the siding on the sunroom ran really low to the ground and the pavers were pretty much up against it.
So, here's where it gets interesting. I thought it looked kind of strange how the siding was covered all the way around. I pulled it up and apparently the support post for the entire sunroom are sunk into the ground in concrete like a fence post would be. Now inside the sunroom is a concrete slab that is tiled but apparently around the big slab they poured the footers on the outside of it and put the 4x4 post into it in direct contact with dirt..
Well you guessed it.. they are rotted. I can't tell how many yet because it has river rock around it pretty deep like a makeshift french drain, but the couple I can get to, the wood is rotted and spongy. There's 15 post around the whole thing and it supports a roof over it.
What is the best way to go about fixing this? I know know if I poured new footers and put in the metal brackets to hold the post they have to be pretty deep,but if I dig the old ones out then does that point start below undisturbed soil? If I chop off the post obviously supporting the roof and pour cement and add a bracket into the existing footer is there any easy way to get the rotted wood out first? Any better options? I'm basically working alone on this and on a budget so I really don't think I could afford to pay someone. I'm prepared for it to be a ton of work and to have to pretty much strip the "sunroom" down to the bare bones to do this just want it easy as possible. I have time I assume since it's not pulling away from the house not anything I have noticed, but I'm the type of person it will bug the **** out of me knowing something is wrong.
The most recent and so far biggest thing I have come across has me stumped. I will try to explain the best I can.. We have a sunroom on the back of our house that I assume was once a screened in porch or maybe just a covered porch. You walk out and there's a paver patio that is pretty uneven. When it rains i noticed that the water was starting to pool against the sunroom that the pavers butted up against. I noticed that the siding on the sunroom ran really low to the ground and the pavers were pretty much up against it.
So, here's where it gets interesting. I thought it looked kind of strange how the siding was covered all the way around. I pulled it up and apparently the support post for the entire sunroom are sunk into the ground in concrete like a fence post would be. Now inside the sunroom is a concrete slab that is tiled but apparently around the big slab they poured the footers on the outside of it and put the 4x4 post into it in direct contact with dirt..
Well you guessed it.. they are rotted. I can't tell how many yet because it has river rock around it pretty deep like a makeshift french drain, but the couple I can get to, the wood is rotted and spongy. There's 15 post around the whole thing and it supports a roof over it.
What is the best way to go about fixing this? I know know if I poured new footers and put in the metal brackets to hold the post they have to be pretty deep,but if I dig the old ones out then does that point start below undisturbed soil? If I chop off the post obviously supporting the roof and pour cement and add a bracket into the existing footer is there any easy way to get the rotted wood out first? Any better options? I'm basically working alone on this and on a budget so I really don't think I could afford to pay someone. I'm prepared for it to be a ton of work and to have to pretty much strip the "sunroom" down to the bare bones to do this just want it easy as possible. I have time I assume since it's not pulling away from the house not anything I have noticed, but I'm the type of person it will bug the **** out of me knowing something is wrong.