kurt

I buy it in 50 lb. bags at the depot. I forget the brand name; I recognize the bag and buy it. It's expensive as hell. It's about $26 for a 50 pound bag. Now that I think about it, it would be ridiculously expensive for this application. It'd be thousands of dollars just for material.

I've got a couple clients that went with the system and put finished walls over it. It can "work", I guess, but if the detailing isn't excellent in the extreme, then that water can be directed places we can't see it. Exterior systems are cost prohibitive, true. No one seems to care anymore about what happens in 40 years, but I have a nagging reticence about using these systems because I happen to care about what happens in 40 years. Maybe I should stop caring. Problem solved.

Seen them, don't like them, they do make the interior dry, albeit at the expense of washing out the foundation. No one seems to want to do it the right way, which is DP on the exterior. The idea seems to be catching on in Chicago....where we like to do things backward. If they're on an old stone foundation, one gains the benefit of not having to watch while it completely destroys the foundation.

Shameful. Good for business, though....[:-angel]

It's a very interesting approach and solution. It's got me thinking about grouting mixtures. Have you ever worked with that fast set stuff that's like heavy cream? It goes off exothermically, and sets in about 15 minutes, and it bonds like glue. I was wondering if you could do lifts of that stuff....it would flow and possibly be better at filling voids. Or, it might be too soupy and run out all over the place and be total ****ing mess. Do you think the soupy stuff could work?

My thoughts exactly, and they may not have gone down far enough. The whole thing looks mushy. Also, that crown is pathetic; calling it a crown is granting legitimacy....it's a mortar pile on top of shitty brick.

I kinda like that. I think I'll steal it.

Yes, it does. There's not anything in the pics that triggers panic on my part. Cracked foundation, leaking form ties....someone injected it and it.

It's mostly steel forms around here; those things extend plenty if it's a steel form. Whatever they are, it's some kind of form tie sealing application.

Did you vibrate it?

On 2nd look, Dave's right. The little plastic caps were installed to prevent flesh ripping, then they gooped around the ties. I just glanced at it and didn't bother to see if they were actually injection ports.

$2000?!?! It costs about $35, maybe a tad more or less. That's funny. The guy's a dick. Case closed. It's not going to blend, but it's also not the end of the world. There are colorants you can apply that can get a better match. I'm looking at your brick, it looks like a high fire vitrified material....the harder mortar is less likely to spall the harder brick. If it was a soft brick, you could get some spalling. You just got a Master Class in how it goes sometimes. It happens here all the time...people get a guy, it's all great talk on the front end, then loony tunes. At least it wasn't for huge money. Best case is getting done, getting the asshole off your property, and pulling up reviews before hiring next time.

Looks like they squirted the form tie holes.

You don't need weeps; it's not a cavity wall assembly. Old masonry accommodates and manages moisture through the sheer mass of the wall and the miracle of soft lime mortars; it's not a rainscreen. I recommend the flashing to isolate the steel from the corrosive cement. You don't really have to because it's not about moisture management in your type wall. The steel we get now is pot stuff; general purpose, not particularly corrosion resistant. In the time this place was built, part of the spec on quality homes was the material and chrome content of the steel. The really good stuff has a very faint bluish tint to the edge when you cut it; that's the chrome and maybe some molybdenum. Hard to know. Yours was probably basic stuff because it rusted; the good stuff can go >100 years. If the guy can't give you a spec on the membrane, it's not there. He should be able to answer your questions in <5 words; the name and mfg. of the material. As implied previously, it's probably not a big deal; it's not about drainage, it's about protecting the steel. If that lighter colored mortar in the pics is the new stuff, it isn't spec mixed. You're probably somewhere around a K, maybe L mortar. I'm just guessing, but it's not a souffle, it's cement. O ratios are roughly Portland 1 part Lime 2 parts Sand 8 - 9 parts K is about Portland 1 part Lime 3 parts Sand 10 - 12 parts IOW, it's a lot of sand. Look at the original mortar, you'll see a lot of sand in it. The lighter color stuff likes much more finely grained, so it's clearly not a match to the original. Again, I don't know if the light color stuff is the new (if it is, the guy's a dork on the match). Mortar matching is pretty much science; you can match anything. Where they cheese you is on sandy mixes. Colorant/dye is really expensive. It takes 10-20 times more colorant for sandy mixes because every grain has to be coated; sand is big grains, hence it takes a lot to color it. Portland is super teeny grains, and easy to color. It's much easier to tint Type N than a K or L type. Good for you on pushing back. The guy sounds like a dick. If his employees are ratting him out, he's absolutely a dick. A good crew is pretty supportive and tight. You have to be; it's a tough job. You don't roll over on your employer if he's treating you right.

Yeah. That part. I wonder a lot about that. I get jealous working in the code bubble that's Chicago. You guys can buy a book with the info. We got 167 different municipalities, all with their own variants. There's even one suburb where the AHJ lobbied to make NMC legal, built his own house, then lobbied to switch it back to EMT. Stuff like that. Can o' worms.

It would around here, but at this point, I'd just get it done. You're rolling, so fasten your seat belt and step on it. Depending on your appetite for conflict, which for most folks is nil, I might string the guy along with smiles and encouragement, and when it was all done, stick a blow torch in his armpit and pull the trigger. Which is shorthand for not paying him what he wants, and if he pushes, push back. He'll make the usual lien threats, at which point you bring in the the authorities and your attorney and....you know....blow torch. Helluva way to do business, right? Sometimes it gets that way. At least, it does in Chicago. Big city construction stuff isn't exactly gentile and polite; sometimes it's gets pushy. If that's not what you want to do, and again, it's not for the faint hearted, $15K isn't a bad deal if they get it done right. You've not commented on the membrane flashing. Is it there? It should be something resembling 40 mil self adhered material, like WR Grace, Bituthane, or something similar. And, I doubt he used the soft mortar. Look around for bags that the cement came in. If it says "Type N", it's not soft mortar. Which, at this point, isn't going to ruin your house, but it would be one more thing to help you pull the trigger on the blow torch.

OK. The guy's leaning into dick category, not the dumbshit category. No masks or goggles, no harness/fall protection equipment, staging looks like it's homemade, no rigging, no tiebacks, no temp railing, buncha ladders, minimal scaffold, etc., etc....the guy's a dick. Masks and goggles are baseline. So are fall harnesses. He probably didn't get a permit because that would trigger an inspection which means he'd get cited for no safety equipment. And maybe for undocumented's. Did I say maybe? Probably.... Looking over the scope, $15K isn't a bad deal at all if it's all cleaned up and the mortar is right. My guess is you're getting worked. Not getting ripped off, but getting worked. But, the contractor's a dick. There's a guy on this site, Hockstein, that works Jersey and maybe NY. He'd probably have a good take on what's going. Are you seeing any membrane flashing over the new lintels?

If it's a couple angles in the upside down Tee configuration, you can extract the lintel a lot easier than if it's an I beam. You slide it (kind of) down and out. It surprises people when the brick all kind of hangs there and you support it with a couple sticks, sometimes with just the window jambs. Brick doesn't fall down like people think. Those beams look like they're part of a larger assembly that runs deep into the wall. I'm not sure exactly what's going on because the pics aren't so hot. If it's deep, he may be going surgical to avoid mangling interior finishes and plaster. Depends on how deep, deep is. He may have thought it was an upside down tee with 2 loose angles and figured the inner angle was still OK. Sometimes it is, sometimes not. Regardless, he screwed up by not figuring possibilities. Other possibilities..... he's a dumbshit and not a very good business person, and just didn't get the proposal right. Very common. Or, he worked you to suck you in and now you're in it and he's got you by the short hairs. It happens. Construction work of this sort isn't populated by lovely, caring individuals operating consistently and according to what most folks expect. Construction projects, even well run operations, are large cans of worms. Screw ups are not uncommon in this stuff. $7K was amazingly cheap and $15K doesn't sound out of line. I got 6 lintels that I would gladly pay $15K to have replaced. The new lintels should have a membrane flashing applied over them, tucked into the next course higher inner wythe to create a back dam and the ends should be turned up a tad to create an end dam. This isolates the new steel from the corrosive effects of the masonry. I wouldn't bother with weeps because the wall isn't a cavity rainscreen and you don't need drainage, per se. You do want the plastic as a prophylactic barrier. You can cut it back so it's not visible, unlike on a veneer or cavity wall. Welcome to how it sometimes happens. Sucks, doesn't it? At the end, you will have a house repaired correctly that will last longer than you will.

Ours are laid up, usually on flat stone spread footings. Some of them are cut stone, rectangles mostly, and some are big rock chunks.

Not bad. We should have a competition to see if we can distill it down to an aphorism, then make tee shirts. Or bumper stickers.

What's your concern? Most folks don't care. Asian folks usually; all my Asian customers want a high functioning exhaust. I'd probably tailor my comments to the clients expectations, which is always a good idea regardless of the concern.

I'd probably also include something about salvaging old apartment equipment for a condo conversion being chickenshit. Install new equipment with the number of circuits and distribution one would get if the place was new.

What's a lot? 10% or 50% more? If it's 10%, don't quibble at all. If it's 50%, somethings up. He may not have been figuring on having to pin support the wall; that adds up. You can't pull out an I beam without pin support; the wall can collapse. If there's an inner wythe, to support things, it's a cakewalk, hence $7K. Pins and full bore support...it's more. Sometimes a *lot*. $7K for 6 lintels, mortar testing, custom mix for repair....is cheap.

Who actually mfg's. Coleman? Is it a Nordyne clone or something similar. I've only seen one in my entire career.

Do you know the actual materials and the proportional mix? Grouting mixes are really weird; some of them set up exothermically in minutes. Was this one of those types, or was it primarily a lime mix?