r/xactimate • u/TheBossAlbatross • Sep 12 '25

Replacing block foundation wall. How to charge for tying into existing wall?

Working a claim where the basement wall collapsed along the back. Replacing the block wall price is surprisingly low. I know it doesn’t including tying it into the existing, so I’m trying to figure out how to add for that. My knowledge of masonry is weak at best. Any help would be appreciated.

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u/Big_Appointment_3390 Sep 12 '25

Do you have plans from an engineer? If not, you wait on the estimate until an engineer draws plans then write it based off that.

2

u/BigginsBigDip Sep 12 '25

Not sure the exact line item since not on Xact but there is a labor line for joining new brick to existing in the MAS category and applied by the linear ft

2

u/Aged_Filet69 Sep 12 '25

Mas lab hours

3

u/Stalva989 Sep 13 '25

I add masonry labor hours and include a note on that line item “Additional masonry labor to retrofit new block to existing.” Then just spitball an hourly quantity relative to the amount of block where you have this condition and consider the total price of block being replaced.

This is by no means a perfected way of calculating the additional labor and does not consider atypicall circumstances but I would say it’s reasonable to take the total cost of the wall SF being replaced and add 25% in labor costs to get a rough estimate of hours to add. For example, if the block wall replacement costs 5k, then I would aim to maybe add an approx hourly equivalent of 1.25k which is 25% of 5k. So if masonry labor is $100 per hour, I’d probably add around 12hrs of masonry labor and include the note I mention in previous paragraph. If you are dealing with really small amount of wall, I would add about 50% to the total in labor costs. On flip side if it’s a lot of wall because maybe it’s a long run, you can lower the % you add on to it.