05 Apr Lanni Construction foundation repair project on “The House with the Sinking Feeling”
We want to profile a project we recently completed at Lanni Construction, Inc., for a homeowner in the beautiful marsh-front subdivision of Pelican Reef in St. Augustine, where the middle section of the lower floor foundation of a home was sinking into the ground. We were contacted at Lanni Construction by the homeowner, after watching us in the neighborhood build a large Mediterranean home on the Intracoastal, because he thought his home was sinking in the middle.
After agreeing to the project and conducting much research and testing of the foundation and soil, we found that the weight of the building pad of the home was surcharging the water out of the soils causing the building pad to fall. It’s like stepping on wet beach sand and the weight of your body squishes all the water out of the sand around your foot. The cause of this was determined to be that original builder used pilings around the perimeter of the home, but never placed any in the middle. Therefore, the whole slab needed to be replaced after stabilizing pilings were installed.
We removed the entire slab out from under the home and install helical pilings and grade beams with a structural slab. This process started by removing and placing all of the home-owners cabinets, vanities, mirrors, granite countertops, glass shower enclosures, toilets, tubs, faucets, sinks, etc. in air conditioned storage for re-installation once we completed of the repairs. We were able to leave the tile backsplash on the interior wall of the kitchen and all of the interior walls with the nails that held all of his artwork.
After demolition and removal of the existing slab floor, we installed the support pilings, grade beams and poured a new slab. We were then able to begin putting the contents of the house all back together. The home-owners artwork is exactly where it was before the repairs, his kitchen is as it should be and his home is no longer sinking. Even the building department asked why we would undertake such a project. We replied: “because he needed us, to and we knew we could do the job”.