Wood Foundation

[Davin Strand]

Anyone come across this much?? I did an inspection that had wood stem wall foundation on about a 6 inches of concrete. The home was built in 1977. The wood support is backed by plywood. About 1.5 feet of wood support was underground. Lot's of wood to ground contact.

[m tyson construction llc]

Davin,
don't run across that in south florida, but it is permissable providing the construction meets the requirement of the IRC. I pulled the following out  of the code articles
Fastners:
fastners used below grade to attach plywood to the exterior side of exterior basement or crawl space wall studs or fastners used in knee wall construction shall be Type304 or316 stainless steel
Wood Treatment:
All lumber and plywood shall be pressure-preserative treated and dried after treatment with AWPA U1 and shall bear the name of an accreditated agency.where lumber and or plywood is cut or drilled after treatment, the treated surface shall be field treated with copper naphthenate, the concentration of which shall contain a minimum of 2 percent copper metal, by repeated brushing, dipping and soaking until the wood absorbs no more preservitive.
I wonder what the chances are that actually happens during construction?

[Davin Strand]

Thanks,

Yea, I didn't come up with the detail you had, but found out it was ok if installed properly. It has been in 33 years and still appears to be in good shape. Not sure if the client was going to buy. He is worried it will eventually fail, and convincing someone else it is ok when he goes to sell. Thanks for the help, karma for you.