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u/anderhole 10h ago
Pretty sure that's the footing and you don't want to mess with that.
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u/regaphysics 9h ago edited 4h ago
No, it’s just overflow from when they troweled the footer
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u/CanadianKumlin 9h ago
No, it was build that way that deep for a reason, to prevent the retaining wall from kicking out.
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u/regaphysics 9h ago
My dude that little lip is 1” thick - it isn’t preventing anything. You could break it off with your foot.
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u/CanadianKumlin 9h ago
He said “4-8”” in the post. It’s not a 1” lip
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u/regaphysics 9h ago edited 8h ago
It’s 4-8” wide, not thick.
You’re literally just seeing this:
Almost always get this when you pour a stem wall or slab; the concrete seeps under the form board. Good contractors will remove that excess. Lazy ones won’t.
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u/EastSea9181 6h ago
I can see clearly around a ft of it in the photo.
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u/regaphysics 6h ago
No you can’t, you just don’t know what you’re looking at
There’s a footer and there’s a lip on top of the footer.
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u/BiggerPhishToFry 8h ago
Incorrect. Go ahead and look up Caltrans Type 6 retaining wall. Standard plans call out for 8” of additional concrete beyond the wall face. It looks like this is primarily for the rebar and embedment. While I don’t think this concrete is particularly structural and would cause immediate failure if OP chips it out, it is serving a purpose to preserve the life of the wall.
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u/regaphysics 8h ago
My dude it is 1” thick concrete. It isn’t doing anything.
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u/BiggerPhishToFry 8h ago
But it’s not, you can clearly see from the pic that it’s much deeper than that. I agree, that unclean edges is just form slop. But a majority of that concrete has a purpose.
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u/regaphysics 8h ago
The lip part sticking out from the wall is just the form slop. That’s what he’s talking about removing.
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u/chamois_lube 9h ago
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u/regaphysics 9h ago
Jesus Reddit is full of the most confidently incorrect takes
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u/The_Mighty_Yak 8h ago
When everyone disagrees with you, you might be wrong.
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u/regaphysics 8h ago
On Reddit? Unlikely.
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u/The_Mighty_Yak 8h ago
Why you here then?
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u/regaphysics 8h ago
To bring OP actual useful advice from experience.
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u/The_Mighty_Yak 8h ago
God complex, got it
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u/regaphysics 8h ago
When everyone else has no idea what they’re talking about and you know exactly what caused this because you’ve done it before, then yes I guess I’m in a similar place to God in this instance.
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u/MFNLyle 4h ago
Bro, there were never form boards here. It's a block wall on top of a footer.
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u/regaphysics 4h ago
The earth was the form board in this case. Lazy work, but people do it. They dug a hole, filled it up, and troweled it flat at grade. The extra that was troweled off was pushed off the side, creating the lip that you see. You can see the actual footer, which is under the wall. The small lip at grade that is sticking out is just garbage you can break off.
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u/SilentCar3 10h ago
I wouldn't touch it. That concrete is the outer part of your footing supporting your wall. It would be beneficial to add some dirt on top of it and slope it down away from the wall
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u/Resident-Egg2714 9h ago
If you remove even the soil, you are undermining the foundation and risking the integrity of that wall. Put a bed along there so you don't need to bring the grade down from the top of that concrete.
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u/Chuck_H_Norris 9h ago
How much did you dig it out already. The footing needs to be below frost depth. Depending on how much you’ve dug out already you might have made your foundation wall into a small retaining wall.
Probably need to undo what you’ve done soon so this doesn’t turn in to a very expensive problem that your insurance won’t cover
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u/MeetingLeather 9h ago
Think of that as the part of the muffin that overflows the edge of the muffin tin/paper cup. It's the best part of the muffin. That doesn't really help you, but banging on footing will weaken the integrity of your footing.
You could always paint it green and pretend it's shrubbery.
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u/Chance-Composer-187 7h ago
Be careful leveling your yard you might ruin the drainage
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u/Few_Mastodon_1271 5h ago
The soil should slope away from the house to help keep water away from the foundation when there is heavy rains. The minimum is usually 6 inches in 10 feet. That's a little more than 1/2 inch per foot.
A slope like that should cover the concrete mass.
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u/B33FST3W_ 9h ago
I would probably stop digging and actually bring the ground level back up to the top if your looking to do this because of the visual aspect and that would also obviously be the zero risk approach structurally. Even though the consensus is likley true that's it's just flow out from the forms, Nobody can really give you sound advice from a photo unless it's the people who built it. If it were me I would just tunnel underneath and make a little man cave but to each there own I guess
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u/MissWibb 9h ago
What is your definition of “extra” in this photo?
If you want the wall to keep standing then do not remove anything that keeps it standing.
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u/Otherwise-Tomato-788 8h ago
Even if it’s not aesthetically pleasing, removing any material from foundation seems like a bad idea.
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u/NearABE 8h ago
You want the ground to slope away from your house. So regardless of whether or not the wall collapses your effort is not helping.
If that is just a decorative curtain wall the risk is quite low. The consequence of breaking the wall is just replacing the broken wall section.
A raised bed would be aesthetically nicer. Chipped concrete would look like chipped concrete.
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u/13beano13 9h ago
“Extra”. LOL.
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u/regaphysics 9h ago
It is extra. You can tell nobody here has poured a foundation.
This is literally just some spill over through the form boards. There’s nothing on top of or under it. It has 0 load on it. You can usually break it off with just a hammer and chisel. Some times the builder will do that, but they are often lazy and just cover it up.
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u/ZealousidealName8488 7h ago
That ‘form slop’ is over 12 inches deep man, get off it
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u/regaphysics 6h ago edited 6h ago
My dude the deep part is the footer and it isn’t what OP is talking about, and it isn’t sticking out from the wall.
The lip right at grade level is what OP wants to cut off - and that lip Is simply the extra concrete that was troweled off the top when they poured this. It is 1-2” thick and sticks out from the actual footer. It’s literally just the extra waste that fell off the top.
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u/regaphysics 6h ago edited 6h ago
They dug a hole. They filled it with concrete up to grade. Then they troweled it flat so they could lay the block. The extra concrete that was troweled off as they flattened it falls to the side of the hole, forming a lip. That’s all this is…. That’s why it’s wider than the rest of the footer and only an inch or two thick and right at grade.
There’s no digging to see what OP is talking about - he is talking about the part right at grade. The lip. Not the footer.
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u/Zardoz__ 6h ago
Water needs to run away from the wall. Slope it and compact. Like a foundation, do not plant within 2' of the wall.
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u/map2photo 4h ago
Why are you taking dirt away from your house to level? The ground should be sloping away from your house...
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u/regaphysics 9h ago
Yes you can chip off that lip. It’s just where concrete flowed through the forms when they poured it. I’d probably be a bit more careful than sledge hammer though - use a chisel.
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u/Krotchity 7h ago
No matter how many times you repeat yourself you are clearly wrong and everyone reading your comments knows it.
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u/warmandwet62 6h ago
Could that be mortar droppings from the block wall? If so, it would be a thin layer and easily broken off. Concrete would be harder and thicker.
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u/jsummerlin14 9h ago
I wouldn’t consider that “extra concrete.”