Subscribe to our TH-cam Channel: th-cam.com/users/internachi?... Follow a structural engineer and home inspector during a structural inspection of a house.
I'm starting my house build next year, this make me want to go dig up the ground and lay me foundation base now and give it a year to settle before building on it.
I just had an SE out to my badly neglected condo complex. I and other owners are having problems with water intrusion due to rampant neglect of outside maintenance by our condo board & property manager. It was a really beautiful & unusually warm fall day so he was rushing and said many incorrect things. Example: old, leaking, mold and mildew covered gutters are incorrectly pitched and nails rusted and pulling out. Water is getting into the soffits & inside behind the brick walls. You can see water staining on the brick under the gutter seam leaks and the brick below is spalling & flaking off dramatically. There are numerous cracks in the brick in the areas where the gutters are leaking. He dismissed the spalling, cracking and flaking off brick as "normal" and due to snow and salt resting against the brick. I pointed out that the areas of spalling & flaking are covered by overhangs and thus not much snow and ZERO rock salt sits next to it. The spalling on the side of the doors under where the gutters leak are also protected from too much snow by the overhangs. The snow service shovels the snow so snow doesn't sit on the porch by the doors, and rock salt isn't put against the brick. The brick walls with numerous cracked brick and some cracks in the mortar - the walls where water got in due to neglected leaking gutters - he dismissed as "normal" cracking due to thermal expansion. When I pressed as to why they are only where the gutters are visibility leaking & there's been water intrusion and mold inside the walls, he begrudgingly admitted it "could be" due to water inside the walls. 🤦 The counter-levered porch overhang - that has lots of mold on it confirmed by lab testing - has old gutters that are leaking & not draining out the downspout (so where is the water going?) He acknowledged the gutters & overhang were pitched oddly, the gutters evidencing leaking and pitched oddly, yet he didn't see a need to explore further if it was or could effect the 2nd floor since the overhang is attached to that floor - it's a flat porch roof without support beams that extends out from the 2nd floor. He never went upstairs. Never went into the attic. I had to push him to even look at the roof. Our roof is 2 years old & messed up! It's leaking, shingles tenting in the first year after install. A support beam is loose per a highly reputable mold remediator who went into the attic to actually inspect. I have received better inspections from contractors / remediators giving free estimates! It's really a shame that it's so difficult to find competent professionals who care about the quality of their work. And with the prices they charge - it's practically thievery.
I reckon most structural distress indentified in this video were caused by differential settlement of the footings, in my opinion, if it was built on piling foundation, all these issues couldn’t have occurred at all. Underpinning work is to be carried out to relevel the slab.
We have a house that’s going through similar problems, but the house is 50+ years old. Most of the damage was caused initially by poor drainage. Now that the drainage has been fixed is the house likely to stop moving??
Hi, Please kindly reply, going nuts here. I am building a resort here. The building is "L" Shaped. So at the vertical junction the building is divide by an expansion joint. The expansion joint initially was 50mm as per the structural design, however, within a span of 2 years I can see that the expansion joint gap has increased by about 25 mm to 30 mm more, and there seem to be cracks along the masonry wall diagonal and in some places horizontal. The cracks are about 1mm to 1.5mm. Should I be worried? The building is supposed to be of 5 floors, just completed 3 floors, 2 more to go.. ? Kindly advice.. Thank you so much in advance. The building is located in Gangtok, which is a hilly area, necessary soil testing for calculation of bearing capacity was done, and the building designed accordingly. Major of the foundation are combined footing, excluding the ones near the expansion joint. The cracks are at the basement around the expansion joint.. the rest of the basement areas are intact. THANKS.
Mostly cracked due to several causes such as: 1 / water leakage and water reduce the resistance of soil. 2 / The upper load is too large, can be large local load (example under bathtub filled with water) and the foundation underneath is not enough resistance, so this foundation goes deeper than the other foundation. 3 / Some auxiliary parts are not strongly bonded to the main part, so they move asynchronously causing the crack (step and floor).
Run like hell! Seriously though, you just write something along the lines of "Due to several cracks found throughout the interior and exterior of the structure it is apparent that the structure is not structurally sound. It is essential that the property is evaluated by a licensed structural engineer. Instances noted in the report are not an exhaustive list or full structural evaluation and the condition should not be considered limited to defects identified in the report."
International Association of Certified Home Inspectors (InterNACHI) survivorship bias ( all the crappy 100 year old houses have been torn down already)
I'm a structural engineer having recently received my PE. Is the typical path of a structural home inspector to receive training and license through InterNACHI or similar associations?
I'm a senior engineer and also a home/commercial property inspector. The sky is the limit being self employed doing property inspections compared to working for someone. $200,000 - $300,000 a year is very realistic when you make $1,000+ every day.
How about explaining some terms..? I'm using your video to supplemental training to prepare for the fed exam. I have never heard the term "Kasson" before. So, A LOT of this video make NO sense to me....
Hi, TJMODLA. You may be interested in our more formal training courses at www.nachi.org/education.htm. Visit that page and scroll down to our courses related to structure. I recommend www.nachi.org/structuralcoursereleased2007.htm. And it's caisson.
I actually don't believe the term "caisson" is being used properly here. It doesn't sound as impressive, but for every time he used "caisson" he should have been saying "footer" or "footings."
UMMMM...we get it, early on. That house is a boat anchor. You sure as hell don't need a home inspector at this point. You need a bulldozer operator and a really good lawyer (good luck trying to even find the corporation that built that house, cause it's likely dismantled and gone). It should be easy to find out who the corporation was owned and run by, but I'll bet it isn't, or at least even if you can, I'd bet holding their feet to the fire over this clusterfark will be nearly impossible. Oh, and the first thing I noticed when you walked up was the boarding all over the broken windows...unless there was recently a hurricane, tornado, or ungodly hail storm. Just sayin'. WHY would ANYONE, ANYWHERE, TRY to "fix" that? It's garbage, pure and simple. Even if you stopped the damage right now, to fix it all properly would take about as much work as just building it from scratch, it appears. It will be nothing but a polished turd when you are finished. "It's DEAD Jim, you take the phasor and I'll get his wallet" "The soil condition is not ideal"...REALLY...you have a magnificent talent for severe understatement. Frankly, though, you would have to be a total and complete IDIOT, or at least completely ignorant and naive to be taken in the this....as always...buyer beware. I don't even know how you would fix something like that, short of the automotive equivalent of jacking up the radiator cap, and replacing the car (and later the radiator cap). What a MESS, and all (or a large part, anyway) for some half-assed site work!!! Some builders are flat out, fraudulent, greedy, amoral, scum of the Earth crooks...as is true in most every other "industry", at least people should be AWARE of THAT. :-( The fact that you are a decent caring individual who would never CONSIDER doing this to someone else (if you are) has no bearing on what they are. And folks that build like this should be DESTROYED by the legal system, but rarely are. Is that house still occupied? At some point, if you stay in that house, you could DIE, when it comes down on your head, if something EXTENSIVE isn't done!
Fascinating. As a homeowner, I am astonished at just how many problems a home can have while it can look fine from a distance!
Thank you.
Same can go for people
"She looks good from afar but she's far from good".
😢😢😢😢😢😢😢🎉😢😢😢😢🎉🎉😢😢😢🎉🎉🎉🎉😢🎉😢🎉😢🎉😢😢🎉🎉🎉@@internachi
You don't need to be a home inspector to tell that the house is structurally unsafe with all those visible cracks.
The client did. They were not able to be present at the inspection.
I'm starting my house build next year, this make me want to go dig up the ground and lay me foundation base now and give it a year to settle before building on it.
Nice!
I just had an SE out to my badly neglected condo complex. I and other owners are having problems with water intrusion due to rampant neglect of outside maintenance by our condo board & property manager.
It was a really beautiful & unusually warm fall day so he was rushing and said many incorrect things. Example: old, leaking, mold and mildew covered gutters are incorrectly pitched and nails rusted and pulling out. Water is getting into the soffits & inside behind the brick walls. You can see water staining on the brick under the gutter seam leaks and the brick below is spalling & flaking off dramatically. There are numerous cracks in the brick in the areas where the gutters are leaking.
He dismissed the spalling, cracking and flaking off brick as "normal" and due to snow and salt resting against the brick.
I pointed out that the areas of spalling & flaking are covered by overhangs and thus not much snow and ZERO rock salt sits next to it. The spalling on the side of the doors under where the gutters leak are also protected from too much snow by the overhangs. The snow service shovels the snow so snow doesn't sit on the porch by the doors, and rock salt isn't put against the brick.
The brick walls with numerous cracked brick and some cracks in the mortar - the walls where water got in due to neglected leaking gutters - he dismissed as "normal" cracking due to thermal expansion. When I pressed as to why they are only where the gutters are visibility leaking & there's been water intrusion and mold inside the walls, he begrudgingly admitted it "could be" due to water inside the walls. 🤦
The counter-levered porch overhang - that has lots of mold on it confirmed by lab testing - has old gutters that are leaking & not draining out the downspout (so where is the water going?) He acknowledged the gutters & overhang were pitched oddly, the gutters evidencing leaking and pitched oddly, yet he didn't see a need to explore further if it was or could effect the 2nd floor since the overhang is attached to that floor - it's a flat porch roof without support beams that extends out from the 2nd floor.
He never went upstairs. Never went into the attic. I had to push him to even look at the roof. Our roof is 2 years old & messed up! It's leaking, shingles tenting in the first year after install. A support beam is loose per a highly reputable mold remediator who went into the attic to actually inspect.
I have received better inspections from contractors / remediators giving free estimates!
It's really a shame that it's so difficult to find competent professionals who care about the quality of their work. And with the prices they charge - it's practically thievery.
Thanks for posting.
This house is terrifying
Not really that bad. It all was fixed.
I reckon most structural distress indentified in this video were caused by differential settlement of the footings, in my opinion, if it was built on piling foundation, all these issues couldn’t have occurred at all. Underpinning work is to be carried out to relevel the slab.
Correct. Good comments.
In all seriousness, is this salvageable, and at what cost? Thanks, great video.
Not sure. It was all corrected. Lots of work. But their dream home is still standing.
We have a house that’s going through similar problems, but the house is 50+ years old. Most of the damage was caused initially by poor drainage. Now that the drainage has been fixed is the house likely to stop moving??
The architect should answer that for you.
Hi, Please kindly reply, going nuts here. I am building a resort here. The building is "L" Shaped. So at the vertical junction the building is divide by an expansion joint. The expansion joint initially was 50mm as per the structural design, however, within a span of 2 years I can see that the expansion joint gap has increased by about 25 mm to 30 mm more, and there seem to be cracks along the masonry wall diagonal and in some places horizontal. The cracks are about 1mm to 1.5mm. Should I be worried? The building is supposed to be of 5 floors, just completed 3 floors, 2 more to go.. ? Kindly advice.. Thank you so much in advance. The building is located in Gangtok, which is a hilly area, necessary soil testing for calculation of bearing capacity was done, and the building designed accordingly. Major of the foundation are combined footing, excluding the ones near the expansion joint. The cracks are at the basement around the expansion joint.. the rest of the basement areas are intact. THANKS.
No problem. I recommend hiring a local home inspector to check things out for you and document them for you. Find one at www.inspectorseek.com.
Mostly cracked due to several causes such as:
1 / water leakage and water reduce the resistance of soil.
2 / The upper load is too large, can be large local load (example under bathtub filled with water) and the foundation underneath is not enough resistance, so this foundation goes deeper than the other foundation.
3 / Some auxiliary parts are not strongly bonded to the main part, so they move asynchronously causing the crack (step and floor).
Correct, Tung. Thanks for the contribution. The ground at the property is "expansive soil" which is prone to large volume changes.
man this is madness is nothin to inspect this should be teared down
It was a house that was structurally corrected. And stands today.
International Association of Certified Home Inspectors (InterNACHI) What kind of corrections were made? Driven piles?
@@internachi is it still standing
Talk about shoddy builder. So as an inspected how would you write this inspection up to a client. What would you say besides run?
Run like hell!
Seriously though, you just write something along the lines of "Due to several cracks found throughout the interior and exterior of the structure it is apparent that the structure is not structurally sound. It is essential that the property is evaluated by a licensed structural engineer. Instances noted in the report are not an exhaustive list or full structural evaluation and the condition should not be considered limited to defects identified in the report."
Stay. :) Ha. Thanks for watching, John.
How much did it cost to fix and how long did it take?
Not sure. Confidential.
Was the house habitable in state it was?? Or was it unsafe to stay in ?
It was not occupied.
5:05 That is okay, it has screws rolf.
Screws. It's all screwed up. Thank you for watching and commenting. More videos are at www.nachi.org/webinars
I hope they were tearing down this house...
Nope. They jacked it up and fixed it.
How old was this house the time of the video?
3 years.
Other than that , the house is fine
Right. Heh.
I feel lucky my house finished settling over 100 years ago.
Understood. 100 years ago, they really knew how to build houses -- made to last.
International Association of Certified Home Inspectors (InterNACHI) survivorship bias ( all the crappy 100 year old houses have been torn down already)
sooo, a new coat of paint to hide the cracks, then?
Yep. Hee hee.
I'm a structural engineer having recently received my PE. Is the typical path of a structural home inspector to receive training and license through InterNACHI or similar associations?
Yes. I recommend watching this short video on how to choose the best training program th-cam.com/video/pIhpM7b5BYc/w-d-xo.html
I'm a senior engineer and also a home/commercial property inspector. The sky is the limit being self employed doing property inspections compared to working for someone. $200,000 - $300,000 a year is very realistic when you make $1,000+ every day.
Wow earthquake Zone???
Wow. Yes.
How about explaining some terms..? I'm using your video to supplemental training to prepare for the fed exam. I have never heard the term "Kasson" before. So, A LOT of this video make NO sense to me....
Hi, TJMODLA. You may be interested in our more formal training courses at www.nachi.org/education.htm. Visit that page and scroll down to our courses related to structure. I recommend www.nachi.org/structuralcoursereleased2007.htm. And it's caisson.
I will take a look at this. Thank you.
Caisson !
Cheers
@@internachi is this open to people outside America? I read the whole opening page, but found nothing on that particular question
with all that jargon = this house is f uped
Ouch.
Foreclosure to Demolition..
Thanks for the feedback.
15:36 As we walk through Heaven, you can see there is a huge crack in the wall-
wait...
Yes. Structural defects all over the place.
I actually don't believe the term "caisson" is being used properly here. It doesn't sound as impressive, but for every time he used "caisson" he should have been saying "footer" or "footings."
Interesting. Thanks for the feedback.
If you knew what he meant, then what difference does it make?
UMMMM...we get it, early on. That house is a boat anchor. You sure as hell don't need a home inspector at this point. You need a bulldozer operator and a really good lawyer (good luck trying to even find the corporation that built that house, cause it's likely dismantled and gone). It should be easy to find out who the corporation was owned and run by, but I'll bet it isn't, or at least even if you can, I'd bet holding their feet to the fire over this clusterfark will be nearly impossible. Oh, and the first thing I noticed when you walked up was the boarding all over the broken windows...unless there was recently a hurricane, tornado, or ungodly hail storm. Just sayin'. WHY would ANYONE, ANYWHERE, TRY to "fix" that? It's garbage, pure and simple. Even if you stopped the damage right now, to fix it all properly would take about as much work as just building it from scratch, it appears. It will be nothing but a polished turd when you are finished. "It's DEAD Jim, you take the phasor and I'll get his wallet"
"The soil condition is not ideal"...REALLY...you have a magnificent talent for severe understatement.
Frankly, though, you would have to be a total and complete IDIOT, or at least completely ignorant and naive to be taken in the this....as always...buyer beware. I don't even know how you would fix something like that, short of the automotive equivalent of jacking up the radiator cap, and replacing the car (and later the radiator cap). What a MESS, and all (or a large part, anyway) for some half-assed site work!!! Some builders are flat out, fraudulent, greedy, amoral, scum of the Earth crooks...as is true in most every other "industry", at least people should be AWARE of THAT. :-( The fact that you are a decent caring individual who would never CONSIDER doing this to someone else (if you are) has no bearing on what they are. And folks that build like this should be DESTROYED by the legal system, but rarely are. Is that house still occupied? At some point, if you stay in that house, you could DIE, when it comes down on your head, if something EXTENSIVE isn't done!
That's an awesomely fun comment and feedback, John. I like the Star Trek and Godfather cross-over reference.
@@internachi I KNEW you were on the ball! ;-) Enjoyed the vid.
great video, also drink every time he says #caisson or #slab is not necessarily structural 😆
Thanks, Bruce, for the comment. I'll take a closer look.
The owener should get a refund.
Thank you for the comment.
A house built for a cheap rich man.
Maybe. It's a good thing that a home inspection was performed.
Wow, that is one UGLY house! As they say, money can't buy taste. Too bad they fixed it, looks like it would've been a nice lot for something decent.
Thanks for the feedback, Matthew.