Question about bolts on foundation

Blaze

Blaze

The Jeeper Reaper
Joined
Aug 9, 2005
Location
Wake Forest, NC
We had our home inspection for our current house last week. The inspector said that there are no anchor bolts holding our house to the foundation. We are the fourth owner of this home, so it has never been noticed or seen as an issue before so I'm not too terribly concerned, but still wondering.

My house was built in 1987, someone at work told me that anchor bolts were not required until after Hugo in 1989.

Anyone know when they were required? The buyers are having a structural engineer come out and look at it and see what they say.
 
We are having a house built right now and the builder used anchor bolts in the foundation.
 
Blaze said:
We had our home inspection for our current house last week. The inspector said that there are no anchor bolts holding our house to the foundation. We are the fourth owner of this home, so it has never been noticed or seen as an issue before so I'm not too terribly concerned, but still wondering.

My house was built in 1987, someone at work told me that anchor bolts were not required until after Hugo in 1989.

Anyone know when they were required? The buyers are having a structural engineer come out and look at it and see what they say.
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Our house was built around the same time and I was surprised to find that there is no mudsill on our foundation. Basically the floor joists are laid directly onto the blockwork. We figured this out when building an addition onto the house and the new walls were about 1 3/4" higher than the original house. Upon inspection, that's what we found. In order to mate up the new walls to the foundation, we were allowed to insert a bituminous membrane between the block and the joists to keep water from wicking up the wood and thus allowing insects to eat the wood. This allowed the two buildings to mesh, but at the time it was a nightmare dealing with the building inspector.

We used anchor bolts, but if I recall, instead of tying them to a traditional mudsill, we used angle brackets and tied it all to the rim joists. It was a big old mess, but since I was willing to "overbuild", the inspector was willing to work with me. After all, when was the last time a hurricane "hit" Davidson County? All we seem to get is a lot of rain.

With everything we've run into between the building itself to the septic system, this house would never have been able to be built on the land it's on by today's standards. I wish they'd run city sewer here so I can tie onto it and get rid of my septic system once and for all.
 
Like you said, the only time they see any load is in extreme wind events. I wouldn't worry about it, and I wouldn't retrofit.
 
I have no idea. That was 25 years ago. Cyd might have access to residential code from 87, but I'm too busy to go look it up right now.

But yeah, Hugo and Andrew and a few other big storms had major impacts on residential construction code. That's where all the rafter tie requirements and stuff today come from. So I wouldn't be surprised.
 
What kind of foundation is it?

I will be interested to see what the engineer has to say. The ones here are crazy. So how is it attached? It needs to be anchored somehow. I have no idea what codes were in 87.
 
It is a masonry foundation, normal residential crawl space. I'm not sure how it is attached, but it has gone through permitting when it was built and three other home inspections and it was never brought up.
 
broncosbybart said:
It needs to be anchored somehow.
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Not really. Our house has been sitting in the same place for 70 years, basically gravity-loaded on the footings. Couple of earthquakes, countless hurricanes, hasn't moved yet.
 
So had the inspection on our new house today, which also doesn't have anchor bolts. I asked the inspector, who was also a licensed GC, and he said it is only a recent requirement and that all houses up until recently don't have the anchor bolts and are just fine. He said the other inspector shouldn't have mentioned it since it isn't an issue and is up to code for the time.

We'll see what happens.
 
I'll ask one of the building inspectors when they come back from the field today if they remember when the anchor bolts were required.
 
I don't think anchor bolts were required until 1990 or right around there. First house I remember having to put them in was around 94.
 
Drill some holes, drop some epoxy and a piece of threaded rod with a nut on top. Now they are there, maybe not proper, but they are there. I've been building for yrs, It's probably not the only thing that is boogered up.
 
Got our inspection report and repair request. Inspection report had the normal piddly stuff (including to repair the fireplace door that the inspector broke, dead serious here....) along with the bolt thing. The repair request didn't mention the bolts so I guess they realized they weren't needed. We should be good to go with things.
 
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