Anyone concrete block experts?

[Speedy]

You can never have too much concrete.

[Diana]

Not a PE, nor an engineer of any flavor.

Why not grade the ground downwards away from the house, essentially making a shallow “v” between the house and the edge of the yard, thereby ensuring that the water drains away to another part of the yard? I don’t know what the setup is at your place, but such a thing has been done in my front yard, allowing the water to flow to the ditch to side of the house. French drains can be your friend here.

This way, no concrete work needs done.

I know, dumb idea. But you never know until you ask…

Edit: And NO, putting anything wooden below the ground invites rot and termites, at least here.

[mattkime]

Speedy wrote:
You can never have too much concrete.

Didn't realize you worked for the mob.

[Ca Bob]

I have to say that this is one of the most unique lines I have ever read.

[pdq]

BTW, because the project manager for the general contractor said the tuck-under garage floor must be slab on grade, yesterday I went out and dug up the dirt in the middle of the area to be filled in the diagram above, right next to the edge of “the slab” that was sticking above ground, just to see how thick this slab was.

I got down over 12” and was still seeing a vertical wall or edge of intact, crack-free concrete. At that point, I ran into a horizontal layer of concrete (a sunken part of the old driveway into the garage? Or a concrete apron?) that stuck out perpendicular to the slab edge and prevented me from digging deeper.

12+ inches (and who knows who much more) in thickness is a hell of a “slab” for 1940s. But the project manager doesn’t care.

This kind of house reno is just pissing me off.

[Acer]

Was the horizontal bit actually foundation, I wonder? Under a block wall, the true foundation is poured concrete that is wider than the block on top of it.

[pdq]

Acer wrote:
Was the horizontal bit actually foundation, I wonder? Under a block wall, the true foundation is poured concrete that is wider than the block on top of it.

This house has a poured foundation - we just thought maybe two rows of block ~8 ft wide would fill the space above. In any case, the horizontal bit stuck out at least 5 inches (didn’t find the end of it), and this was 12 inches below (current) grade. There looked to be a 1/4 to 1/2” gap between the vertical and horizontal concrete surfaces.