Rotted sill

[malarson]

Hey guys. I've got an old one car garage in my back yard next to my 24x36 shop. Its just for storage for my tractor/mower/yard tools. I rebuilt it maybe 14 yrs ago, new siding panels, roof, etc. Thats all in great shape, but the sill is rotting. It sits right on the concrete slab and has gotten wet the last few years when the snow melts. Actually right now there is an inch of ice covering the floor! 25 yrs ago when we bought the place I dug around it and added corrugated drain pipe all the way around and drained it into a drainage ditch next to it. Seemed to work ok but not doing the job now. My plan is to add eavestroughs, and cut out the old sill. I plan to build a temp wall to support the roof, and working in sections cut out the old sill and add concrete block (4x8x16) and put a new sill on top. The block should help keep the water out. I also plan to cut out just enough of the studs to sit on the sill. Any other ideas?

 

[Bretny]

Post pictures!

You should not have ice/water on the floor and you should always have gutters and proper drainage any where that gets snow.

Snow melts off roof onto frozen ground then backup into your building. Proper gutters and drainage stop this.

Did you discharge the drains you put in to daylight or a dry well? Drywells dont work well when the ground is frozen.

 

[Kaizen]

Jack the whole thing up and get a taller height. Plan sounds fine. Will have to lower doors. Dig out and place good French drain if the last one is not flowing. Try to lower soil level outside.


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[PelicanPines]

I had a 2 1/2 car garage. One bay was 3 feet lower than the other. The upper bay was up against a dirt mound... the whole wall including the sill was rotted. We built interior bracing removed the wall... gutted the dirt mound... built a retaining wall... replaced the sill and wall... took 2 months of weekends. We didn't have to alter the foundation.

It's a lot of work... I will tell you. Do it right... don't take shortcuts.

 

[Monza Harry]

Well my experience tells me that the lower sill should be pressure treated and you should have vapour barrier on the inside wrapped right around to the "permeable barrier" on the outside. If the wood sits on the concrete [soil, or brick]it will rot! When I moved my back half of my garage to my place[ yes that is a story for another day myself]I had to replace the sill and did the front half during all of the chaos, I didn't use vapour barrier and in less than 10 years I need to do it again. I will put the sill plate gasket on the inside and outside of the vapor barrier with no perforations below the upper most edge of the 12" Vapour Barrier [it is conveniently sold in 12" wide rolls for this , windows, and doors. This isn't the easiest answer but after watching the construction of a couple of structures by reputable builders, this seems to be the method of choice around here. Harry
P.S. The above advice should be used as well as this advise the GJ gang has advised you well from my experiance

 

[matt_i]

1 row of block is not going to keep the water out by itself.

Envision a plane which is the floor. The soil has to start below that elevation and should slope downwards from there on all sides of the bldg. Now you can dig ditches and eventually pipe the ditches to somewhere lower.

This will fix the water problem. Then you can work on the rotted framing.

 

[theoldwizard1]

Jack the whole thing up and get a taller height.

Sorry, but IMHO that is a waste of time. My guess is that the corrugated pipe is now blocked and not carrying the water away. Read this

My French Drain and Dry Well Project

Note I used solid pipe with hole inside of a sock. The ditch was lined with landscape cloth and then a small amount of 3/4" crushed limestone for leveling. Then the pipe and covered with more 3/4" crushed limestone. The landscape cloth was folded in and the dirt replaced.

The grade in the garden behind the garage is actually higher than the garage floor. for that part of the ditch I did NOT replace the top soil, but back filled with stone dust/slag before compacting and installing the garden wall blocks.

The following year I did replace the sill because it was rotten. I removed the lower piece of vinyl siding, cut the old sill into 4'-6' section and knocked it out with a sledge. After each section was knocked out, it was immediately replaced with PT lumber.

NO WATER except what blows in from the front under the door seal.

 

[The Cobbler]

I'm with the camp to jack up and do it all at once (whether you raise the ceiling height is irrelivant & your choice. a good time to to do it if you're needing/wanting more height. . fix your drainage issue .
might be easier/cheaper to form & pour a sill than lay block

 

[Kaizen]

Dig out and place good French drain if the last one is not flowing. Try to lower soil level

Sorry, but IMHO that is a waste of time. My guess is that the corrugated pipe is now blocked and not carrying the water away. Read this

.

Did you miss this part? He definitely needs to dig and change soul. But if he is going to jack it he might as well add more block. Won’t help with water issue but will give more headroom and keep silk dry




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[malarson]

So a little backstory here...18 yrs ago right next to this garage I built a new 24 x 36 garage. Literally 3 feet from it. My plan was to get the new garage built and tear down the old one, the bldg insp. actually wrote a demolition permit for it when he inspected the footings, he said I needed 10ft or something between structures. Didn't matter to me cause I was tearing it down anyway. And then a buddy of mine became the bldg insp. and I never did tear it down. The new garage floor is 6 inches or so higher than the other garage floor, so sloping the ground is not an option, it will just run towards the other garage. I would really like to tie the 2 bldgs together, thus eliminating the 3 feet in between, but that's another project.

 

[matt_i]

Imo based on updated info, a 1 car is more or less a double shed. Easy to demo. 6" overpour would be good enough with a vapor barrier in-between, after some prep to the 3 foot strip, and tie it to the existing big shop slab. Then rebuild as an addition.