No Need to Panic
Faltering Foundation The Old House Web My two-story house in rural Indiana was built before 1860. The bricks were made on site, as it was a brick and tile factory during the Civil War. The original house has a stone foundation and crawl space, and the supporting wall is about a foot-thick brick wall that is now disintegrating into powder. What could be causing this? Is there anything I can do to save it? How should I go about stopping the damage before my house caves in? It may not be possible to arrest the disintegration of the bricks in your supporting wall, but if the wall is a foot thick it is probably providing plenty of support for the time being. Unless there are obvious signs of an imminent collapse, there's no need to panic. Modern brick-making is a tightly controlled manufacturing process in which bricks are fired and cooled in precise steps. Temperatures inside a tunnel kiln can hit 2,400° F. and the result is an extremely hard and durable building component. Before al