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Chetek, WI | I had a business doing this for 13 years while farming.
1.Hire a 50/60 size excavator to dig outside the house along the wall and beside the footing 3-4 feet out. Just removing the dirt the wall will go back to straight because of the weight of the house.
2. Knock out the face of some blocks near the middle then the top of the outside wall and pour concrete to form a vertical column inside the block. Use rebar to poke the concrete thru the webs in the block and leave the rebar in when you are done and sticking out thru the face if you choose to do step 3. If not, cement shut the block face when the column is done.
3. Optional and a good idea frame a couple 2 foot wide by 1 foot deep (off the wall) columns and fill with concrete and rebar. Do this outside and attach it to the wall with rebar that you cemented into the vertical column and left sticking out thru the block face.
4. Wash the walls and waterproof them. I didn’t like to pressure wash a block foundation because it forced water into the seams and took forever to dry back out. I would hire a waterproofing pro to spray on a good thick coating on a 100% dry wall. I would then install F250 below grade 2” foam over the fully cured coating for the R value and also to protect the coating. Drain board is not necessary if you backfill with good material and washed rock 3 feet deep. If you use the same crap that came out of the hole, use drainage board
5. Install Draintile beside the footing and run to daylight or to a sump pit inside. Cover with 3 feet of washed rock and cover that with landscape material to keep the rock separate from what you backfill with over the rock. A cement truck will bring the washed rock and run it in with the chute. The rock will tear the waterproofing coating right off the wall if you don’t protect it.
6. If you have egress windows, install a bit of Draintile vertical with a filter to help water find the rock. Don’t connect it directly to the footing tile because leaves will plug the tile.
It is way easier and less messy to fix it from the outside. You need the waterproofing and Draintile anyway so you have a better fix if you do the outside. If you don’t keep the block dry, someone eventually will have jack up the house and replace the block foundation with poured walls which also is an option but expensive. If you do nothing with the bowed block wall, it will eventually fall in. It might be 10 years from now but it will happen.
Most importantly, get everything lined up and do it in a week with no rain or you will have a mess. Get the dirt that comes out of the hole away from the house so if it rains it doesn’t end up back in the hole. Also, don’t install fancy landscaping and decks because it will settle 8-12 inches next to the wall.
I hired out the digging so I could do something else that day but I could fix a problem foundation in 3-4 days.
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Stabilizing a block basement wall
