Shoring up an old foundation wall

[Robert Huffman]

Inspected an old house today where they added a 4 ft tall foundation wall 2 blocks thick up against the original block foundation wall. in the basement. Have seen this a few times in the last few years but this time I saw a thin horizontal crack in this 4 ft wall. Struck me as odd since it was probably added to shore up an old wall. The original wall above this wall was vertical. Plan to treat this like any other horizontal crack in the report. Wondering if any of you have seen this added wall before up against an old foundation wall or a horizontal crack appearing on it.

[Randy Mayo]

Robert,

The CMU wall may not have been designed properly which would require the blocks to have reinforcing steel doweled into the concrete floor and all the voids in the CMU should be filled with concrete. In addition there probably should be some type of drainage system to capture any water between the two walls.

[John Alex]

yeah, i had seen this type of foundation walls and those homes were built in 1970's during a mold inspection in orlando (https://fsginspections.com/services/mold-related-services/). i was amazed to see