Old houses and rubble foundations
 

I came across a very informative article about retrofitting old houses that have rubble foundation walls. It's very interesting to me, since these are the kind of walls that my basement has and I've been racking my brain for ways to bring it up to par with the newer homes. It's basically a chronicle of one person's experience in retrofitting one of these basements.

Here's the article:
Building Science Insights
BSI-041: Rubble Foundations

By the way, this site has some VERY detailed information about energy retrofits and insulating, definitely worth some reading around.

Nice article. I hadn't realized jacking up a house could be that diy-able.

They sure made it look easy. I'm pretty sure that plumbing mains had to be disconnected. Copper pipe might flex 1" upwards, but I'm pretty sure that cast iron drain pipes wouldn't budge. I'd find my toilet in the basement if I tried that with my house.

Thats why I didn't write easy. :) I guess a more accurate term would be affordable and DIY-able.

cut the cast iron drain at an easy spot to work then use an MJ to connect the two parts. You can easily temporarily gain an inch with an MJ. While you're at it replace the upper part of the cast stack with ABS in preparation of updating the entire system.

I just had to do similar to my stack but I have cast for the bottom 2 feet going to copper which had some sort of lead boot around a steel toilet flange which was too low and had long since broken. I cut the copper and replaced everything above it with ABS and connected with an MJ. It took longer to cut the copper then to do everything else.

The only reason I didn't replace all of the cast was it runs through the wall into the backyard and I didn't want to dig and find where it eventually changes to plastic at the street.