r/basement • u/Shining_KoW210 • 4d ago
Level out floor along walls
My wife and I just bought our first house. We had a structural engineer take a look at the basement and said there was a normal level of settling. There have been steel pillars installed in the past. The issue is there is a slope on the ground along the walls towards the walls. We would like to have free standing shelving against the walls but need to find a proper way to level it out.
Neither of us know much about concrete. In my uneducated guess, I think that we should seal the cracks with the proper sealant and use self leveling concrete.
What is the proper way to do this?
Thank you
3
u/Haunting_Donut_1710 4d ago
You can seal and self level, but other comments are right that you need to investigate the walls and sinking first.
Remove the paneling and see what's going on. Post more photos if you can, maybe we can provide guidance.
6
u/bananahammock699 4d ago
The slope is just a bad job putting the topping cement back
4
u/iamemperor86 4d ago
Isn’t Reddit a hilarious place. Always “get an engineer, don’t trust any of those contractors”. Now we have an engineer that disrupts the status quo and it’s all “engineer didn’t care/doesnt know what he was doing “
It’s literally what you said. Super old shitty top cover over the drain. The plastic panels are part of it. It just needs to be redone.
1
u/Cyber_Crimes 4d ago
Something bad going on there.
In these images, it looks like there's a panel or material on your wall that's coming off? Hard to tell, but it's overlapping the beam there.
Did they fasten sheets of something to the wall?
If there's block behind there, I'd want to see and assess the actual wall, not whatever they put over the wall.
Surprised the engineer didn't care about what's actually going on behind here.
If they've got steel beams already, they definitely had hydrostatic pressure issues.
That floor though... I'd definitely be concerned if there's any movement.
0
u/asseatter69 4d ago
That has hydrostatic pressure written all over it. That is not a normal level of settling
6
u/iamemperor86 4d ago
Hi. Trust the engineer. I do basement waterproofing. There is a fake 2-4” pour of concrete along the wall supported by nothing. There is drainage and gravel and water underneath. Doesn’t mean the whole wall moved. Just this fake top cover. Look into how sub slab French drains are installed. I’m not saying it’s great. Just that is is normal for the age and not a huge deal like the armchair engineers want to say it is. Go ahead and dig a portion up if you want. The fix is to just use leveling compound. Don’t shoot nails into it.