Highs in the 70's: House Repair

[jcfiala]

This weekend my wife pointed out a disturbing thing about our house that needed to be fixed. I live in this lovely brick victorian home built sometime around 1882 (Denver had a bit of a fire back then, and records are spotty). At some point, I'm not sure when, someone decided to come along and add an addition - a mud room of sorts, fitted to the back of the house, including half of a bathroom. Well, apparently they didn't actually structurally add it to the house - they glued it on - there's still the back brick wall of the house visible in the mudroom.

And what my wife pointed out was that if you looked along that brick wall, you could see daylight - the top of the addition was peeling away somewhat, and air was easily getting through. Oof. We can't really afford a lot, so what we came up with was white duck tape and a pair of cans of 'Great Stuff' - this expandable foam spray insulation. We used the tape to close the gap, and then sprayed foam behind it, letting it spread out and close the area, keeping the warmth in... which seems to have worked. Except we didn't wear gloves like the can said, and now I've got foam insulation stuck to my fingers. Ugh.

We're going to need to do a serious fix in time, I can tell, but at the moment it'll do, it'll keep out the cold, and it doesn't rain that much anyway. (Plus, the overhang of the back of the house is over the gap, which helps.) If the weather is good again next week, we'll try to do something with the roof of the addition to help glue it to the house for the winter.

Comments

[zeeth_kyrah]

This suggests to me that the foundation is the real problem - the addition probably has a separate foundation which is settling at a different rate (and angle) from the rest of the house; the walls may eventually crack apart as well. I'd suggest consulting an architect or general contractor about this.