Storm Stories: The Horan story

Hurricane Ivan's storm surge undermined the Horan's foundation. The back porch has fallen away from the house. There were large voids under the slab beneath the house. There was about 5' of water inside the house.

The storm surge undermined the foundation along the entire back side. The corner has sunk about 3". You can see the cracks in the block.

We dug out and poured a new footing along the entire back side of the home then set 20 ton jacks every 5' then we slowly jacked the home back up one pump at a time.

We built block and concrete piers next to each jack tying them into the old footing with steel dowels then removed the jacks. Then we formed up and poured a new foundation wall solid all along the back side of the house. You can see the wood concrete forms in place on the right. Next we drilled cut holes in the slab inside the house and pumped a concrete slurry mix into them filling all the voids underneath the house slab.

We attached heavy duty metal straps with concrete screw anchors from the old block to the frame walls in order to restore the connections between the old foundation walls and the wood walls.

Water front living in the living room.

This is typical of what the storm surge from hurricane Ivan did to slab on grade homes built along the sound on built up lots. The storm surge caused scour (hydraulic erosion) to wash away the lot fill from under the slab causing the foundation to collapse.

"Thanks for handling this for us. I thought our home was a gonner. Great job building it back stronger than it was before. "

~ Danny & Sharon Horan