Posted by Jim R on May 06, 2003 at 17:01:15:
I have an older house with an unfinished basement with concrete block walls. There are significant horizontal cracks in the walls at about 2 ft below the soil level and I have noticed some new stair step cracks in the corners. The previous owner retrofitted a drainage system around the interior perimeter of the walls and tied it into a sump pump. He did a poor job and I was thinking about opening it back up and redoing it. I thought as long as I am doing this I could reinforce the concrete block walls by putting in a treated lumber 2x6 stud wall in front of the cracked concrete block wall. I figure this would reinforce the concrete block wall and provide me with a stud wall to finish off. I plan to tie the new stud wall into both the footing (by either laying the bottom plate into the concrete floor slab or tying it in with anchor bolts) and the joists. I would be interested to hear any thoughts on this.