How We Shored Up Our Porch Foundation

Over the past few years, we have been working on our porch. One phase of this project was installing simulated stone. Before we could do this, however, we had to shore up the porch foundation.

As you can see, we had erosion under our porch floor. We have never had an issue with the porch floor cracking, but we wanted to shore it up just as a precaution.

How we Shored Up our Porch Foundation

First, Neal dug out the loose dirt under the concrete floor slab. Daisy is supervising his work! ?Using an electric grinder, we ground off the rough edges of the existing concrete floor slab to create a flat surface. We needed a flat surface to attach the plywood frame to keep the concrete from seeping out. Neal dug out the loose dirt to create a clean surface for the new concrete. We determined where to cut the holes in the concrete floor slab based on where the erosion started (orange spots in the picture below). This was about one to two feet from the edge of the concrete floor slab. We rented a core drill from Home Depot and cut four holes toward the edge of the concrete floor slab. We will use these holes to pour concrete to fill in the gap and shore up the foundation (porch floor). Here are two of the four holes we cut.

We built a wooden frame to contain the new concrete.

We measured and cut multiple pieces of plywood which would serve as our frame (i.e. keep the cement from seeping out). We cut windows in the plywood to install plexiglass windows. These windows will help us see the concrete filling the gap. Neal started the “window holes” with an electric drill and bit. I then used a jigsaw to cut from one hole to the other to create the windows. Here is one of the windows. We cut the plexiglass and screwed over each hole to create plexiglass windows. This will help us to see the concrete filling in the gap under the patio floor. Neal installed the plywood frame (with the plexiglass windows) on the front edge of the porch floor. This plywood will keep the concrete from seeping out. He installed a 2×4 stake to hold the plywood frame in place. Here is the wood frame in place to keep the concrete from seeping out from under the porch floor. The first piece of plywood contains the plexiglass windows which will enable us to see the concrete filling the gap. In a bucket with a drill and paddle, we mixed concrete with aggregate (rock) and added a shovel full of cement. We then poured the mixture in each of the four holes. The plexiglass windows enabled us to see the concrete filling the gap. ?

After a few days (allowing the new concrete to harden, we removed the plywood to reveal the new concrete. In the picture below, you can see where the new concrete filled the gap. It also created a surface for us to stick our stone.

Once this cured, we were ready to install the simulated stone on the face of the front patio porch.

The picture below shows where we added the stone to the front of our patio porch. Click HERE to learn how we installed this simulated stone.

Click HERE to learn how we built our porch fireplace.

Click HERE to learn how we totally transformed our Porch.

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