hey, do we have any Foundation guys here, dudes or non dude guys who know stuff about foundations? like how bad does this look
There wasn’t any noticeable shifting on the floors inside. The realtor used a phone app as a level but I’m pretty sure that’s real iffy as an accurate measuring device.
the big crack on the corner by the exposed cables is on a side of the house near a large tree on the neighboring property
the realtor thought the shifting in the foundation was caused by the drain (covered by leaves in one of the pics) dumping water straight down, but when I looked at it again I noticed concrete that was poured under the gutter, probably intended to slant away and divert it into a little ditch leading to the street
so I’m thinking the shifting in the foundation predates the drainage issue and was maybe caused by the tree? I didn’t see any big roots TOO close but, idk
this house is kind of small (smaller than our apartment) but it’s in a bourgie cracker restaurant neighborhood, or close enough to walk to it, so I imagine the ol’ housing-as-commodities we got going on means it will constantly increase in value as long
but idk if something like this means it’s like totally fucked because we can’t really afford to buy this place AND put tens of thousands of dollars into some foundation repair bullshit
p.s. side note it has a really nice neighborhood, neighbor across the street has a FREE SEED LIBRARY! and a COMMUNITY PLANT EXCHANGE! that’s amazing, the neighbor on the side grows peppers and idk what else in above ground containers, looks like spicy shit too. The other neighbor is a soccer fan but nothing can be perfect right?
p.p.s. the realtor kept speaking of insane plans to expand the bathroom but it also has a very large attic that like imo if finished could add like A Bunch of Value to the house? so, idk, it might be a good idea???
it’s so hard to decide because it’s so much money and contracts and like what if the foundation is totally fucked??? I guess the owner was a contractor and he checked it out when he bought it, but it’s been a rental property since 2007. The HVAC also looks old.
but if we take too long to decide, someone might just buy it up because like why not it’s in this great location! who cares if the foundations is fucked if you have a million dollars to spend fixing it!
(I clicked on this post, not knowing if it was going to be about the Foundation series of sci-fi novels or a question about construction.)
Not a contractor by any stretch but I’d have some questions.
First, building inspector? You’re giving me vibes that this is a place where building inspectors are a thing. It might be worth the cost (unless you can convince the owner of the house to pay for it) to get a building inspector to look at the place.
Is the house on a concrete pad? (seems like it)
That brickwork? (That is actual brickwork and not some plastic/metal molded sheets that look like brickwork, right?) Any idea when that was added? Is it on the concrete pad or is it sitting outside of the perimeter of the concrete pad on the dirt? If the bricks aren’t sitting on the actual foundation, the cracked brickwork won’t tell you whats going on with the actual foundation.
Based on the last photo I doubt it’s a slab. It’s probably raised foundation with the brickwork covering up the gap.
Also, you generally see those stair step cracks along the joints with settling and more aggressive cracks when it comes to an actual failing foundation. If it was molded it would most likely not crack along the joints like that if they were fake.
The only inspector who has the training to make a call on it though is a structural engineer. Everybody else is going to couch whatever they find with “recommend evaluation by relevant professional.” The structural engineer is that professional.
how much they’re legally obligated to “find” and report to you really varies, as does whether they need any kind of certification at all to go into that line of work
the inspection that was done on the house we live in missed a lot of stuff, some of which became pretty fucking obvious once we had done a little bit of home improvement diy – like, there was a whole section of ductwork between the hvac and the upstairs that was disconnected and venting into the space between the floors, and it was totally obvious to the untrained eye looking with a flashlight in the right spot, you just needed to know where to look. we lived here 18 months before we decided to investigate why the hall floor always felt so wildly warm/cold compared to the rest of the house and saw it in the first 30 seconds of peering around the HVAC area.
so yeah, moral of the story is, don’t put your faith in them. dude found some obvious, surface-level code-breaking things, but there was no actual inspection of the infrastructure of the house, and we ended up finding a lot wrong. that broken ductwork wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg.
Fair.
Wonder if OP could get a quote from anyplace doing foundation repair work that they could feel confident about instead of a building inspector?
I thought it was going to be about the medical TV show
You do NOT want the owner of the house to pay for it; then the inspector will seek to do what they want (e.g. say it’s fine) rather than what you as the buyer want (e.g. see if anything is actually wrong).
Paying for it and hiring are two different things. I’d imagine that OP would be the person making the arrangements with the relevant inspector, get a quote and pass the quote on to the seller.
yeah I mean it’s a question now of “is it worth it to consider paying for all that” because if they say “yeah this shit is fucked” then we can’t afford to fix it and we’ll just have spent money on an inspection for nothing
yeah idk it has a crawlspace but I thought the brick was the foundation. idk I’m not a foundation guy! I’m just a dude!
Crawlspace huh? Okay, if it were me, I’d probably be told by my spouse to crawl around under the house. First, to look around to see if any part of the home’s footprint was not over concrete. Second to see how many of the supports that the house is sitting on are actually doing their job. Third, move to the areas where the exterior brickwork is cracked to see if I can see daylight through that brickwork and look for cracking in the concrete pad that I’m crawling around on.
(Also, the one time we did mortgage stuff we were required to have home owner’s insurance. That insurance place sent their own person to look at the house who took pictures and drew some sketches that the insurance place kinda just… choose random things to require us to “fix” before insuring the home. Not sure how much of a prick the insurance company would be to you, but it absolutely is something they can choose to do.)
Well yeah but we could also not buy the house. I just don’t want to pay for an inspection that tells us it’s fucked and be out that money for nothing, if it’s visibly fucked
Idk why this hellish society is SO fucked up. Why isn’t it the fucking seller’s responsibility to pay for an inspection
As a person who owns a house that has lots of fucked up things we’ve been slowly finding over the years, I absolutely feel you.