Things seen during structural inspections!

I want to start by saying this was an awesome week for inspections. We found tons of cool stuff and we hope you enjoy! This is a home built on a hillside that has a few major issues going on. The obvious one in this photo is the large crack in the concrete and displacement of the connecting stem walls.

Additionally, the hillside is pushing against the foundation, causing the whole house to shift and lean.

You can see how the cripple wall is now leaning toward one side of the home. This is a pretty significant repair project.

This is a line of 6 "bridge homes" that extended over a ravine. We only inspected one of them but they are so unique that I felt I had to share. They were all held up by stilts and concrete caissons.

Here we have a cracked and deteriorated foundation wall. Something like this is too damaged to be strapped or filled with epoxy.

Here's part of that same wall. Moisture from the exterior has slowly decayed the concrete and caused a breach in the actual wall through to the interior. You can see the dirt and root systems behind the concrete wall.

This retaining wall was built with no rebar and is now cracked, displaced and is leaning forward. It looks like it's ready to collapse.

You know it's going to be a fun crawl when you poke your head inside and see this!

A foundation crack that you could practically stick your hand through. No strapping or epoxy filling for this one.

We've been doing some work for this client over the past year or so and he loves creating interesting things around his house. Well, this time he has created a hatch door that drops down from his stilt home to a barrel shaped sauna that could fit an entire family. Very interesting stuff.

A house that burnt down from a fire. Going price: $500,000.

This one is super interesting! In the foreground you can see a concrete foundation with a mudsill bolted to it. This is normal. In the background you see the original framing of the house which is floating about 4 inches over the original 1909 brick foundation. This is NOT normal. Both of these should be level with each other... One side of the home is lifted while the other side is sinking. Incredible.

Here's what most of the post & piers looked like under that same home.

Have you ever heard of the La Brea Tar Pits? They are pits located in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles that are famous for preserving prehistoric bones and animal parts. Well, we inspected a property not too far from those pits. With that being said, what you are seeing is natural oil and tar seeping up through the ground into this person's basement.

Water was coming into the area and over time it brought the tar and oil with it. Nasty stuff.

This is supposed to be a pigeon deterrent. Multiple fake crows (with purchase tags still on them) and a row of spikes should do the trick!

Wrapping this cracked concrete column with duct tape seemed to be a good solution to this homeowner!

You just gotta love some LA plumbers. They've been undermining foundations since the very beginning! Now, any foundation work needed in this area will likely call for removal of this plumbing and relocating it to another area.

This column is partially holding up a story above and most of it was completely rotted inside. A knife could be driven into the wood and it would crumble with little effort.

This is a property in Palos Verdes, CA located on a cut & fill lot. Compaction of the soil wasn't properly done and this caused the side of the property to settle. The wall and pathway are now cracking and separating from the rest of the home.

Here's another shot of the fence/wall leaning down the hill.

This is an interesting attempt at tying in a central foundation to an exterior brick foundation. There's a lot of wood rot and crumbling concrete/mortar underneath as well.

Water was running through this foundation for a while and created a little ravine. This can go unnoticed and cause some serious settlement over time.

The wooden sill plate right above the concrete has been softened by the moisture getting through the exterior. That made it conform to the shape of the concrete. As the concrete eroded and settled, the sill plate stayed right there with it. Interesting stuff.

These are two unnecessary post & piers accompanied by an old AC unit. Open wire and glass didn't help the situation either...

Some crispy subfloor framing. No need to replace the charred parts, right?

This is one of the more unique piers that we've seen under a house. It's just a solid piece of concrete that extends from the ground all the way up to an interesting steel girder. Not your usual "post and pier" support.

This is a concrete pile and a wooden post supporting a stilt home above. The concrete is breaking apart mainly due to seismic activity and racking of the posts during earthquakes. Part of the process of repairing this is trying to figure out how the wooden post is attached to the concrete. No exterior method was used. Some sort of steel tie-in had to have been done.

It's a little hard to see and the photo really doesn't do it any justice, but this is how you tell if your property is leaning off its foundation.

Earth-to-wood contact is never a good idea but this takes it to the next level. I guess they really want a hump in their flooring. There's a reason post & piers are supposed to be under a girder.

The more I go through these photos the more I realize this was the week for crazy posts & piers!

This is what happens when your house shifts 6 inches after years of seismic activity and settlement.

Here we have a large hillside retaining wall that's leaning toward the house and endangering the property and homeowner.

If a wall is leaning, it is considered to be "failing" but once it reaches about 10% of the height of the wall it is considered to be a "failed" retaining wall and will more than likely be unsalvagable. A replacement would be necessary.

Here is a good shot showing the angle of the failing wall.

Wild fire? No. Lightning strike? No. Contractors leaving machinery plugged in over night causing a short-circuit and starting a fire? Yes.

It's very unfortunate. The homeowner woke up to the fire department putting out the fire. Scary stuff and luckily nobody was hurt. This is why you hire competent contractors.

Another weird bird deterrent. "Run my brothers."

Some more classic LA posts and piers. Loose bricks and cut 2x6 members. Beautiful!

Here we have a leaning masonry wall that needs to be replaced.

This is a super old and deteriorated concrete foundation. Tons of water was discovered under this home and, if you look closely, you can see it pooling in the background. A dry foundation is a happy foundation.

How many washers does it take to clean a bolt?

This pier began to erode and the post went with it. Looks ready to take a dive off the end.

A mickey mouse repair under a driveway. They thought adding additional concrete pads and posts would be the right call to help support the driveway and car weight.

Navigating this crawlspace was an interesting time. Mounds of dirt were found to be holding up concrete piers and posts. Most of which were just solo islands of soil with nothing around them.

Some of them were completely undermined and seemed to be one minor earthquake away from falling apart. The posts weren't even connected to the piers, so if they failed it would all just fall down.

Water caused the steel inside this foundation to rust, causing concrete to break apart and crack. The large horizontal crack you see is a direct result of the spall damage displacing the concrete where the steel began to rust.

This may very well be the jankiest mickey mouse attempt at reinforcing a foundation & subfloor that we've seen. They used 2x8 and 2x4 members for cross bracing, the 2x8 is notched and nailed into the mudsill, they saw-cut the post (which supports the subfloor above) and the 2x4 runs directly through it, compromising the entire supporting post and pier system. Absolutely incredible.

The corner of this foundation cracked and slowly pushed upward due to no rebar being present inside the concrete wall.

This is a short stud which is part of a cripple wall that had some serious dry rot and termite damage.

This was an open pipe that seemed to be covered up or filled entirely with dirt. Kind of looks like the house is going to the bathroom. Additionally, the framing all around this area was rotting like crazy. I wonder why...

This is a property we inspected in Long Beach. Notice the top of the ceiling and how it slants at an extreme rate down to the right. This is NOT an architectural detail. The entire right side of this 4-story building had compressed framing, causing each unit to have sloping floors starting from the top and ending at the point in the photo. Scary stuff, but not a bad view.

This is a foundation that had previously cracked and settled down to the right corner of the home. In an attempt to repair this, someone filled the crack with epoxy and concrete and shoved shims in between the mudsill and the concrete foundation to make it even again. Fail.

Crumbling to bits with no rebar, bolting or bracing. Beautiful!

That ought to do it!

Oh boy, that's some major foundation bulging!

These were a set of illegal retaining walls we were called out to be inspected.

Sometimes people get flagged by the city for building illegal retaining walls on their property. The hillside regulations and codes for LA are very strict and for good reason. This means that any city requirement or circumvented law will be called out by city inspectors and called for correction. This could be as simple as pulling a proper permit after structural engineers stamp the wall as okay OR as bad as knocking down the entire wall and starting from scratch. Just do it the right way folks, it's much easier (and cheaper) in the long run.

A shoddy foundation with holes in the framing, earth-to-wood contact, and eroded concrete foundation walls. I would say the spider webs are the biggest threat.

This is a 2x4 post attempting a diving board trick. It's not even connected to the pier or wood shim.

Rotted subfloor framing with a good portion of it touching dirt. Termites and moisture will destroy treated or untreated wood if it's constantly touching dirt.

This is a cracking and spalling concrete foundation. Spalling concrete occurs when the reinforcement steel inside the concrete foundation begins to rust, causing the concrete to crack and break apart.

This was a crack we inspected in the concrete ceiling of a large parking area of a structure. It's an indication that there could be spall damage and severe structural repairs needed.

We inspected this old river rock retaining wall this week that had collapsed from the recent rains. A wall may seem secure but there’s nothing like a good rainstorm to really test it out!

We are proposing a good solution to repair and stabilize the yard.

I guess you could call this a foundation but it's really just a bunch of dusty concrete, masonry blocks and wooden framing members installed together. Beautiful.

Bad foundation forming results in air pockets in the concrete, compromising structural integrity and shoving aesthetics out the window. Whoever did this didn't seem to care.

There's a little too much going on in this one for me to say anything. I'll let you guys find them all! Let me know what you see.

Untreated and unbraced girders and posts. This should do fine in an earthquake!

A plumber demoed this section of the slab foundation to access a leaking pipe. He then proceeded to dig and undermine a good portion of the foundation without shoring.

He did have a good reason though, because this was one of the pipes that had broken and had been leaking for quite some time.

This was a retaining wall made entirely of clay tile blocks. These are usually used for partition walls or fireproofing.

They aren't generally used in the US too much but most countries in Europe and the Middle East still use them.

This is a CMU (Concrete Masonry Unit) foundation on a steep hillside that we inspected. The foundation is slowly settling down the hillside and pulling away from the rest of the home. This doesn't quite do it justice but the separation you see in the wall is an indication that the left side (side closest to the steep hillside) is settling.

Here is the outside of that exact wall. The stucco is beginning to crack, chip away and widen as the foundation creeps down the hillside. Lots of work is needed on this one.

Park your car next to this wall at your own peril.

A decently sized foundation crack. If you look closely you can see the bowing in the mudsill above the foundation. The left side is settling while the right side is staying put.

Here we have a girder sitting on a screw instead of sitting snugly in the saddle.