This last weekend I made the decision to take down my front deck because it is old/rotting, had pulled away from the ledger board on the house, and was resting on top of my main gas line. I figured I would just take it down and replace it but once it was down I noticed they had used a 2x6 ripped down to around 5 inches as part of the ledger board under the doorway. The old cement porch stoop is still there and they were resting the joist/ledger boards on that. I want to put this back correctly. I believe I can use a 2x8 ledger board if I remove the concrete slab off the top of the old stoop. However, this will leave a pretty large cavity that goes down around 8ft to the bottom of my basement/foundation. It doesn't appear to have any drainage in the cavity (water is already pooling in the bottom) and there is no access to it except from the top. The cement has settled in a way that the slab on top is sloping towards the inside corner of my house and caused some damage to the sill boards. The top slab does not reach all the way to the foundation walls in the inside corner area and there is a gap that I can see down into the cavity. So I would like to remove the slab if nothing else but to prevent the water from flowing towards my house. What should I do with the cavity under the concrete pad? Fill it in with dirt? Cover it somehow with something thin so I can still use 2x8s to replace the deck? We get a good amount of rain in Iowa and I don't want water to just pool in there over time, potentially leaking into my basement. I think running a pump into the cavity would be hard to service with a new deck over it. Looking for suggestions.
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sparky256DSL
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What to do with this cavity under my door?
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This last weekend I made the decision to take down my front deck because it is old/rotting, had pulled away from the ledger board on the house, and was resting on top of my main gas line. I figured I would just take it down and replace it but once it was down I noticed they had used a 2x6 ripped down to around 5 inches as part of the ledger board under the doorway. The old cement porch stoop is still there and they were resting the joist/ledger boards on that. I want to put this back correctly. I believe I can use a 2x8 ledger board if I remove the concrete slab off the top of the old stoop. However, this will leave a pretty large cavity that goes down around 8ft to the bottom of my basement/foundation. It doesn't appear to have any drainage in the cavity (water is already pooling in the bottom) and there is no access to it except from the top. The cement has settled in a way that the slab on top is sloping towards the inside corner of my house and caused some damage to the sill boards. The top slab does not reach all the way to the foundation walls in the inside corner area and there is a gap that I can see down into the cavity. So I would like to remove the slab if nothing else but to prevent the water from flowing towards my house. What should I do with the cavity under the concrete pad? Fill it in with dirt? Cover it somehow with something thin so I can still use 2x8s to replace the deck? We get a good amount of rain in Iowa and I don't want water to just pool in there over time, potentially leaking into my basement. I think running a pump into the cavity would be hard to service with a new deck over it. Looking for suggestions.
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