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Stone foundation restoration

Started by Doorbarn5923, October 19, 2023, 11:32:54 AM

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Doorbarn5923

Good day Forestry/Barn folks:

I have the pleasure to work in the NE part of the state and it is awash with reds and oranges now; beautiful.  I also have the pleasure to work on the maintenance/restoration of two old barns.  The stone foundations of each need some TLC. I've done some research/reading and have reached out to some local (Wis/Iowa) businesses that might be able to help and wondering if there is a contractor list that is still kept up?  I have an old list from the Wisconsin Barn Preservation (society or something else?) and have contacted a number of businesses and individuals on the list, but I've gotten very little response.  I'm sure there is a wealth of knowledge out there but I've not found the right spot yet.  Working now to educate myself on the stone foundation but would like to know more about all of the structure's construction/maintenance/restoration.  More specifically focusing on mortar now and I have repaired some cracks with an approximation of O type lime mortar (1:2:9- Portland IL cement: type S lime:mason sand) and the work has withstood one winter without obvious negative change.

I am not a mason.  My training is in engineering and medicine.

I think the number of people who know these things; the ins and outs of stone masonry, timber framing, old building restoration that is good and true to the building, are few, but hopefully growing.  It is that finding them takes time and likely they are all quite busy--because they are few.  I am hoping that this forum can steer me to those veins of knowledge that can help breathe longer life into the structures I am able to service.

Thank you for your attention and time.

beenthere

Welcome to the Forestry Forum. 

Do you have some pics of the barns you are working on so we can get a better perspective of your projects? 

Old barn foundations seem to suffer from lack of animal heat in the cold winters. When the cows are gone, the walls seem to crumble down and the frozen ground can push that much harder on the outside of the stone walls. 

Have you been in contact with member @Rooster ?

Also member @Don P 
Don is involved in restoring foundations.  
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

Don P

The pup and I sat on the porch and admired the leaves and sunset this evening. A beautiful Fall day. He recalled through temptations several times today. Catching on more every day.

I'd bet Tom King has more experience than me, I tend to hold up the house or barn and replace them here unless they were built by one man who's work I've run into several times. And usually I'm there to work on century old wood not his foundations  :).

It sounds like you are aware of not wanting to be too strong. What I've run into most often has been described as "hot mix". Mostly burnt limestone mixed with sand and water in a "You better have goggles, respirator and long sleeves" very active reaction. It was mixed/piled and left overnight to slake and cool.
Hot-mixed Mortars: Advantages and Limitations (buildingconservation.com)

This is a pic I had in my gallery of some I've run into. I think this was on the banks of the Holston River. The limestone and sand probably came right out of the river. The coarse unslaked particles are the giveaway that they were not making a lime putty first, it was a quick process where the plasters wanted to have a pit slaking the day ground was cleared for a house and it was marginally ready for plasterwork 2 years later having by then become a smooth putty. After that hot steaming quicklime reaction, what had slaked by morning was going in the wall the next day as mortar.

You can see white coarse particles of still hard unslaked limestone here;


 

The mortar I've seen in barns up there is the same. The chunks just become another aggregate in the mortar. All that said and without seeing it I don't think your mix will be a problem with stone. It is more forgiving than a soft brick..

Tom King

Need pictures, both up close and looking at the big picture, inside and out.  Closeups of any falling parts would be good too, as well as closeups of any different kinds of stone used.

Even in houses, they used different mixes of mortar for most of the work in the wall, and a different mix on the outside finished part that you see.  

George Washington wrote everything down about any building that he had done.  He called for a mix of one part lime to three parts sand for the inner layers of a foundation wall, and one part lime to two parts sand for the outside.  I'm sure the mason would have done some variation of that for working with, but the idea was to not use any more lime than absolutely necessary.  We don't need to worry as much about saving lime these days, as it's a relatively cheap part of the job.  Back then it was a lot of work for them to produce it in a state that could be used.

Now that we have Portland Cement, it's kind of foolish not to use some for stone work.

Unfortunately, the number of people who understand this stuff, much less do it, is going down instead of up.  Stone work is real work, and the number of people who want to do real work, even if they understand it, is getting smaller too.

Doorbarn5923

Thank you much beenthere, Don P, and Tom King.  Off to a good start.  The photo of the mortar looks very similar to what I see, especially the vee wedge shaped gray piece front center, slightly R. First time photo addition problems.  I've the photos to a file within this site, I titled them, applied the changes, it was saved, but how do I get it to this post??  Some small thing I'm not doing.  The preview does not show any photos, they're right here?

beenthere

Doorbarn
Click on your username, and there you will see "gallery". Click that and you will see your pics. Each will display by clicking the pic. There you can turn them so the presentation is upright, if that is how you want them to look in your post. There is a url under each one that you can copy to you your post (use the modify button when at your post to insert your pic(s).

Or you can click the blue hi-lighted bar under your posts to add your photos.  If already in your gallery, then you can click "My gallery" in the heading next to "home" to select the one you want to post.
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

Doorbarn5923

Photos of the two foundations that I've been working on.



Cornerstone







Before



After



Same crack, inside.



Below is a part of an email I received from Limeworks, theirArchitectural Conservator / Laboratory Manager, whose thoughts sound ok and good to me.  However, it swirls in my head as a difference from that said on this forum.  Certainly, I can understand that there are both differences of opinion and nuance to all technical ideas and understanding, but for the learning DIYer, this can perpetuate confusion. 


Cement: Yes, Europeans never lost the knowledge of lime like we did here in the US and so they do not rely on cement as much as we do.  They use both hydraulic and non-hydraulic limes still.  Portland cement was only invented in England in 1824 and first used in the US in 1868.  Our pre-1868 building stock are, for the most part, standing just fine without cement.  The idea that you need cement at all for small scale masonry structures is silly and part of why cement is the 2nd most polluting human industry.  In Europe they have a better understanding of this than we do here and so they tend to use more lime and less cement where cement isn't needed.
Type 1L cement is a type of Portland cement that uses limestone filler to reduce the amount of cement needed (called PLC usually).  Typically these cements do not have hydrated lime added when making a mortar and simply have you add an amount of sand depending on the strength you need.  You'd want to consult the manufacturer's packaging or tech documents to see how much sand they want you to add to make a Type  O mortar.  It isn't likely to be the same proportions as a 1:2:9 mix.  If you do make a 1:2:9 mix using Type 1L, the mortar will likely be weaker than a normal Type O, but that's probably okay.  I can't say for sure how it would compare to a normal 1:2:9 though as I don't have any data on that.

Thanks for the help.  I like this forum so far.

Tom King

Exact ratio is really not that important.  Even a little bit of Portland cement added increases the adhesive strength a lot.  It even comes in white.  With good footing, and properly proportioned laying of strong stone, you don't really need any help from adhesive strength.  It doesn't look like you have either there.

I have exactly zero experience with that type of stone, and don't even know what type it is, so I can't be much help on that.  

Sorry, but the longevity of your fix of that vertical crack will not be the best.

While I agree that production of Portland cement is one of the world's largest polluters, producing lime is not too much different.  Both burn Limestone which releases CO2.  Limestone is CaCO3.  Burning it releases CO2, as does burning almost anything else, leaving you with quicklime, which is CaO.

If you are old enough to remember the Apollo moon landing, you might remember that the moon dust stuck to everything.  It's mostly quicklime.  Quicklime is very reactive, and will readily bond to CO2, or other things.  If we dusted 400 billion metric tons of moon dust on our upper atmosphere, it would lower the Earth's temperature enough to make a difference.

Trow & Holden has a whole bunch of great stoneworking videos showing their tools.  You don't need to buy their tools, but it's a good education on stonework just by watching their videos.  This is a link to their website.  You should be able to find their youtube channel.  It's hard to do any stonework without having to cut some.

Most people think when you lay stone you put your best flat side, after selecting the show face, down.  It's actually the opposite.  Your biggest flat side needs to be on the top to allow the largest choice for where to support the next layer. 

Stonecutting and Masonry Tools | Trow & Holden Company|kt~|mt~|ta~432892106568&_vsrefdom=wordstream&gad=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw1t2pBhAFEiwA_-A-NNj9xSrkLxHfZ693GMBUiLj6YsRCCaiJvXcfmltbIN-3FxpE0FvQihoCpxgQAvD_BwE


Doorbarn5923

Thanks Mr. King.  I was not aware of moon dust being quick lime, interesting.  I didn't quite get, "Doesn't look like you have either there", to what are you referring, either.....?  Can you tell me more about the vertical crack repair?  This is the reason that I'm on this forum.  I may be a bit bummed that I did something wrong, but I won't be offended.  I'm trying to teach myself, so I expect errors, wrong decisions, blunders, and poor outcomes.  If I can then understand how to do something right, or at least better, then all is well.

My photos did not show a cedar tree that is near the vertical crack and its likely culprit.  The tree still stands and I did not dig to the bottom of the foundation to repair both inside and outside properly, nor did I check the sill plate to assure level.  All of the previous may affect the repair and doubtlessly other things that I've not even considered.  I read somewhere that within the crack I should try to span the two sides with stones.  Perhaps I did a poor job of that.  But the cleaned out crack was getting kind of wide to me, so I did what I did. 

Tom King

Good footing and properly proportioned stone laying.  You need to span vertical joints with stones.  It does look like it could have been caused by tree roots.

The rule of thumb for spanning head joints between stones is the stone above needs at least 1/3 of it on one side of the head joint.

These days, with strong concrete mortar, you see whole walls built with head joints that might go all the way up the wall.  If nothing ever moves below or above, they might stay there.  With old stone walls built on top of the ground with Lime mortar, such a wall would have fallen long ago.

With softer stone, the stones spanning head joints are even more important.  Without enough thickness, the stone will crack right along with the head joint.

There is a lot more to it than just stacking up stones.  I really can't tell much at all about your walls because of all the parging that's been done to it.

That corner stone you're replacing looks like a good one.  The stone below it sank for some reason.  Around here there were a lot of them built like that right on top of the ground.  The only way to really fix those is to take the whole wall down or as much as you can, pour a proper footing, and rebuild the stonework.

They're all different.  This is an 1828 house with mostly Gneiss stones and some Schist in the stone work.



 


beenthere

Speaking of stone walls built directly on the ground with no footing/foundation below, this was a serious problem with Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings at Taliesen, Spring Green, WI.
Locals say Wright had plans/sketches for buildings left with them to get someone to lay up the stone, and put/build his plans for the building on top of the walls. Caused a lot of problems as these walls and foundations moved with the freezing and thawing of the ground. 
  
Witnessed the problem many times when asked to inspect and suggest "fixes" to the inherent problems.  
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

Don P

Judging from your area and the looks, I'd bet the stone is roughly worked limestone. But now I'm wondering if we're in Door County? Another way to think about headjoints and stacking stone " Two over one, one over two". Doesn't mean a crack won't zigzag down the wall anyway, but it is stronger than a stack of joints. What you have now is a working joint. If they can't love it, the wall needs rebuilding.

I can't imagine a little frost heave would really harm any of the "work" at Taliesin  :D.

Tom King

At least the roof doesn't leak.  With a good foundation, and a good roof over it, almost anything will stand up......oh...wait.

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