Building a new base on a house?

[evalouise]

I'm considering if it's possible to gradually replace the concrete block walls and instead build walls with wooden beams. The entire lower part of the house is made of concrete blocks, which might not be in good condition. On top of the four walls lies a wooden frame with 8 roof trusses. It's a nice and insulated loft with standing height, roof windows, and wooden floors. All the wood is in good shape. It feels like a completely crazy idea, but can you put in 4 corners and somehow brace the house so that you can take down the concrete and make a wooden construction instead? Ideally, I would like to achieve a traditional foundation with natural stone. The house is 8 x 5 meters. Can anyone advise me?

Want

I decided to chisel away the concrete floor... the continuation is in a new thread "chiseled away the concrete floor," not sure how this works with the threads here... I thought it would continue here. But maybe someone in this thread wanted to know the continuation so now you know where to find it! /Evalouise

that thread might have disappeared somehow... I want to report how it turned out in the end... after 8 years... time flies when you're at it... ... where was I?... yes, so I chiseled away the concrete floor, beneath it was soil and larger and smaller stones, everything was dug out, about 40 cm deep. The concrete block house was practically hovering in the air for a while it felt like... then a geotextile was laid, followed by 20 cm of gravel, then 20 cm of styrofoam in two offset layers of 10 cm each, then reinforcement, and then 5-7 cm of concrete. And preparations to connect to the municipal (water/sewage) system. Then since I got nervous that we had dug so deep and removed soil, we dug a drainage system around a meter outside the house all around and installed a pump that could divert water just in case. Then there was interior insulation on all walls with träullit 5 cm (or was it 7? I don't remember) which was screwed into the concrete blocks and then clay plaster about 2 cm thick. By then, the husband had given up... he probably thought I had strange ideas. Then I painted everything with egg oil tempera (I will never buy paint in a store again) it looked so nice! Then there was some carpentry with the kitchen, inner wall, wardrobes, etc., with timber from a demolished house and some mixed from Blocket. And a couple of guys from the neighboring village helped me lay tiles on the concrete floor with underfloor heating called "Kelvin" - which could be laid directly into the adhesive, expensive but it was easy and didn't build much in terms of cm. Then I searched for almost a year for a double door that needed to be 130 cm wide and 190 cm high and finally found one on Blocket. You shouldn't be in a hurry... The measure wasn't negotiable anywhere because in such old concrete houses there is apparently reinforcement over every window that doesn't allow moving or any kind of widening to the sides (the reinforcement holds the beams over the windows) and since the door was to be placed where there was previously a window, you had to wait for the right door. Then it was the electrician's turn to come here and he was not happy with the clay plastering where he was supposed to put sockets... haha.. well.. I didn't think about it... so I had to kindly hack up the clay and träullit in selected places and screw in wooden plates that had to be anchored in the concrete block and make grooves in the wall for cable pipes and then put the clay back on. He was satisfied with that. One thing I want to tip about if you want to use clay on träullit is to cement between the blocks, I did that in some places but missed in two and there it became a narrow crack in the clay but I suppose if you go over with the egg oil tempera a couple more times it will probably be fine. If you want to make your own paint, there's a book called "jordens färg" and I also got a lot of help from those who run https://www.avjord.se/ and also those at Sund Byggvaror where I bought the clay (a pallet) in powder form when I realized I couldn't dig up the clay needed with a spade here on the plot. Sorry, it took so long to report... I get annoyed myself with all the loose threads where you wonder... well then, how did it turn out...? so now you know

 

[evalouise]

Those walls don't look so bad that you need to tear them down, do they?

Good that you wrote here and reminded me!! Now I've tied up all the loose ends!

 

[Workingclasshero]

Hahaha, yeah, what a thread lift, and what a lift for the house!
It feels like you've learned a lot of good things along the way, and it's really neat.
But how did it turn out from the outside?

/W

 

[evalouise]

Hahaha, yes quite the thread revival, and quite the lift for the house!
It feels like you've learned a lot along the way, and it's really splendid.
But how did it turn out on the outside?

/W

Thanks. Yeah, I thought that question would come up... but it was more fun to fix inside. The only thing I managed was to fix the base with some kind of plaster/slurry thing according to instructions from xlbygg. Then I had done some clay plastering on the outside around a window, so that didn't turn out well... haha, so sure, I've learned along the way!! I found some guy in Småland who knows this rendering business, so I hope the poor outside gets some help in October.