by Richard Ewald
Remodelers counteract earth
movement with cable compression
and a concrete grade beam
When asked last fall to convert a
21x21-foot brick schoolhouse in Westminster,
Vt. to a private residence,
Wells & Company faced a considerable
challenge. The nineteenth-century,
one-room schoolhouse had stood
unused for about 70 years. In that time
the old dry-laid fieldstone foundation
had settled, and this caused one corner
to fall and the walls to pivot out at the
top and in at the bottom. This opened
cracks of up to 2 inches in the back
wall (see Figure 1).
One goal of the renovation was to
preserve as much of the existing structure
and appearance as possible. That
meant leaving the unmortared fieldstone
foundations