No footing with my 1950 poured concrete house?

diy001

We are thinking about extend the existing interior basement french drain to the entire basement. Last night I did a pioneer section and found there is no footing under the wall. Three photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bostonj...80/5352471139/

My house is a 1950's ranch, about 1400sqf, poured concrete, no cracks on the walls.

Is it possible there is no footing or I didn't dig deep enough? usually how deep it will be for the footing? or the footing is not required at that time?

Wildie

I had a similar problem with a concrete porch, built in 1948.
It appeared that the builder merely dug a trench 24" into ground and built forms 24" above ground. Cement was poured into the cavity.
I wanted to build a wood frame roof over the porch and the code required footing to be 48" below grade.
So, I had to pour 16" pads and Sono tube piers a various intervals along the base of the wall.

diy-581

A lot of the houses built back then weren't built that great from a foundation standpoint. This was right after WW-II and they guys were coming back from the war and there was a housing boom. Builders were putting up things quick and a few assumptions were made that we have subsequently found to not be correct. Often, they figured that they could just throw a slab of concrete on a piece of land it it would stay in one piece and last. When I was in New Orleans back before Katrina, I noticed houses that had been built with this sort of careless regard to their foundations. They figured that they could dig some ditches (they called them canals), let the water drain into the ditches, then pump the water out of the ditches, and then pour concrete slaps directly on top of the new 'dry' land. Eventually, the ground subsides and the slab breaks, so then there is a market for pumping sand back under the slabs to make them level. I've seen houses that had 18" of difference between the level of the concrete in the garage vs the concrete in the driveway. I've seen houses where the ridge line of the roof had a definite angle in the center of it with at last a food difference in elevation at the middle than at the ends -- basically, it looked like the house had been broken in half along its spine. These days, they drive very long piles / pylons / piers down into the sediment to act as support before putting the concrete on top of this.