Hi,

My basement contractor has placed the brick ledge at the top of my wall instead of a few courses down to acctualy support the brick.

the fix they purpose is to use an angle iron ledger and pack the area under the brick ledge with foam. and foam over the plywood where the wall starts upto the point my cultured stone terminates

could anyone think of any other/better fixes?

thanks

If I understand you correctly, your brickledge is flush with the top of your wall. If this is the case, you could run you joists out over top of the brick ledge (sounds like you stick framing above grade). Your house will get 8" larger all the way around. The concern I would have is that you would need a very wide brick ledge to protrude past your existing ledge. The brick would be cantilevered out quite a bit. Not sure how hi you are going with brick, but I would have an engineer check it out. You would need a 10" flange or so on the angle. Thats quite a distance. I guess you could put one more course of icf on as well. This would obviously raise you floor another 16" or so, but may be an option. Bunt

thanks for the quick reply.

I was just researching large angle iron. Because the basement is built with 8" logix blocks. to "pack" the brick ledge flush I would have to use 4" of ridgid foam and also 4" of rigid above on the stick built walls.

i guess it all depends on the ledger being able to carry the stone. Its only going to be a cultured stone. and only about 4feet up the wall.


adding another few courses of block is not an option now because it would screw up the window height and im already way out of the ground as it is.

you can see the pics of the build at

www.flickr.net/supernintendo/

to get a better idea of what im talking about.

If you have not poured your walls yet you could by but some brickledge and attach it where needed and cut out a section on your forms you already have in place and put your c stirrups in and connect them to your verticals in the wall you already have. 

Cultured stone is it? Take a good hard look at wiping that brick ledge off completely and fastening the stone directly to the ICF surface. Cultured stone installed with mortar over wire mesh screwed to the ICF will put no load on a ledge. The adhesion directly to the wall is more than sufficient. I have about 3' of Owens Corning fake rock on my wall and there is no ledge support below it at all.

Now real brick is another matter altogether. It does need a ledge to rest on.

Different subject: I see from your pictures you have no screws in the field of the dimple membrane, only the screws and tabs at the top edge. Why not? I think all mfr's require, or at least recommend, screws roughly every 18" to 24" over the entire surface of the membrane. It looks like in one of the photos the membrane is being pulled downward by the stone at the bottom.

here is a picture so you understand what i mean.

the brick ledge was put at the wrong spot. they put it at the top of the wall instead of below the window where the cultured stone starts.

they did a good job on the blue skin, they completly shit the bed on the platoon. they forgot to caulk it also. they will be taking it off and redoing it next week they said.

I concerned about weight, put a pt ledger around the outside and build your cultured stone up from that. Be certain you use the correct mortar,adhesive, wire mesh and attach right to the icf.
b merritt

To fix their screw up, you could have them take a 14" or 16" diameter concrete saw with diamond blade and cut off the brick ledge to give you a smooth surface to attach your cultured stone.

Did you mean they messed up the platon?

Astro,
it looks like you have a few things going on there. I would highly recommend that you get an independent engineer to look at it. It's not uncommon to have a steel brick shelf bolted to concrete, but it's usually designed that way from the start. Give me a call if you feel like it, and maybe we can throw a few things around. My arm is in a cast right now and my talker works better than my typer.