Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Foundation repair ? ?

Wonder if I am in need of it .

House is now 22 years old. Have two ro three cracks in paint that run mostly along drywall lines -bedding. Back door hangs crooked- or rather jam looks askew. I have adjusted and done all I could but it looks like the jam is not square. The latch side vertical seem is even though. Above is a bit of a gap on one side. Most doors on one side of first floor tend to sway open in the same direction. I have tried tricks t o resolve that but still happening.

We added a covered patio when we moved in and after several years had the lower portion of the two main cedar supports encased in rock. Big mistake as it collected water , invisibly, and the unseen portions rotted.. A miracle it didn't crash down. We extend the patio and have new supports on resting on top rather than in the ground but the horizontal supports that go into the house header do not look level to me.

We have a tile or two cracked in the large kitchen area that stems from the foundation under it. Just wondering if these could be considered cosmetic things or if bad enough to get someone out. I fear the costs and wonder how many time companies might tell a consumer - no, you are fine.

Looking for some input.

Sounds like the footing is sinking.
I have had to lift/support parts of my house and remove all existing soil 36-40" deep and pour a proper footing and replace the concrete wall with a cinder block wall, my house is over 100 years old.
22 years old isn't very old, my guess is the footing is on poor soil.

I would get the shovel out and dig down and have a look at what type of soil the footing is sitting on.

All wood construction?

Termites in that neck of the woods?

Yep, not sure if you have a slab or a basement, but you have some unstable soil under you. My last house was built in the mid '60's in a clay base subsoil. All brick and it was cracking on the north side. 23K later they had to dig out the north side to the bottom of the basement, support that with heavy brackets, then hydraulically ram supports down 43' to the bedrock, add new drain tile, then back fill the trench with gravel that will perk. Back in the '60's they just dug out for the basements, poured or blocked them and back filled with the same dirt that they dug out. Mom had the same thing happen with her block basement that bowed more than an inch which is past code for ever selling the house. Same 20K plus bill for a new block wall, drain tile and better gravel back fill needed. Water against the foundation that isn't drained properly will wreck it. Been there done that.

A 22 year old house will have some settling but not like that. It’s not level. I’m supposing it has a crawl space rather than built on a slab.

Unless you have a competent builder you trust, I would suggest getting a structural engineer to inspect it. Not cheap but it may save you money in the long run.

We’ve had nine houses built over the years, I learned something every time.

Pics off the drywall and floor tile?
Are the floor cracks offset vertically or just opening horizontally? How wide are the cracks?

If you're on a slab, they can fix it.
Just watched them do a neighbors place a few months back.
They drilled the slab and shot some sorta pressurized foam under it.
They knew what they were doing and had a lot of control.
One area they lifted about 4 inches and nailed it for level.
I was quite surprised of their accuracy.

They corrected and leveled about 30ft of his driveway while they were at it.
For the work on the house and driveway he told me he'd paid about $4K.

Do you have stem wall? Any cracks in the actual concrete? Or if it's a slab any cracks in the floor that you can see you

$4k is very reasonable.

I can tell you a friend of mine had several foundation repairs companies come out during the drought (07-09).

Quotes were from $22 k to almost $100k. It's a 4,000 sf house and a crack in the floor tile across the living area was the symptom.

All of the companies were the big, well known companies in this area of Texas.

Finally had Church Services out (also well-known). They told her the slab was functioning fine and the problem was the drought. They told her to put soaker hoses around the slab. The house never developed any other problems.

I know that's anecdotal, but that's my only experience.

I'd say call around, get quotes and references.

I am an architect and engineer... as a builder/contractor I have dealt with a bunch of issue like you are describing.

But absolutely impossible even render an opinion without a good dozen pictures or so. So Post Pictures.

The easy test is a marble, tennis ball or soccer ball. If it rolls... you have settlement.

Then again, I remember crawling under my grandfather's house on several occasions to help him place shims on top on the foundation blocks. But, those were different times.

FYI... lots of really smart people on this forum (many way smarter than me)... but without pictures... real and useful opinions will be impossible.

It depends on if they can do the pressurized foam thing (4k) or have to dig under the foundation and jack it up with pillars.....that is the big money.

I have a little rental house that was built in the 40's and it settled badly. When I had to completely refurbish it about 4 years ago I called a foundation repair outfit to give me an estimate to level things up. I was thinking they could do the expanding foam operation. Their guy looked at the house for what seemed like a couple of hours and then told me that it was "not a candidate" for the foam and gave me an estimate of $30,000 to fix it with pillars. I thanked him but told him that was (at the time) probably all the house was worth. I lowered baseboards, trimmed doors, shimmed cabinets, and got a few latinos with a few bags of level quick to make things look as good as possible and have been renting it ever since.

I'm in N. TX with the black clay soil and a 50YO pier and beam house. The record drought and rains of the past 10 years have really started causing issues on my place. I just got 2 quotes the other week, one was $10K for 18 exterior and 6 interior piers, but not much detail of the pier types or other work like repairing exterior brick joint cracks etc. The second quote is $17K for 13 piers and some foam under a porch slab. That quote calls out the pier design and covers brick work repair. Both quotes involved them running a level around the house to get the plus/minus of the floor.

I'm looking into having a third-party engineer review and certify whatever we plan to do. It seems like otherwise it's just a foundation guy going off their "hunch" of what's needed. If I'm going to spend money, I'd rather spend "good" money that has some engineering to support it.

The work on the house (Florida) was minimal.
It was one corner, about 10ft each direction from the corner of a monolithic slab. There was also a concrete landing involved that a set of stairs rested on. Then the driveway work.
The crew was in and out of here in 4 to 5 hours.

I'd never seen it done before, I was impressed.

A lot of companies around like that here, probably stay busy with sink hole issues.

Contactor work in Florida can be rather inexpensive compared to some areas. They can't charge more than retirees on fixed incomes can afford.

They probably ding insurance companies on sink hole issues a bit harder.

" We added a covered patio when we moved in and after several years had the lower portion of the two main cedar supports encased in rock. Big mistake as it collected water , invisibly, and the unseen portions rotted.. A miracle it didn't crash down. We extend the patio and have new supports on resting on top rather than in the ground but the horizontal supports that go into the house header do not look level to me.


Is the roof of the covered patio attached to the house, or is it free standing? Sinking of the rotted cedar roof supports will cause the attached roof to pull the house wall out of plumb.

I used a similar system (attached video) on overloaded "floating slabs".

Basically (an ice fishing size hole in the concrete slab)... we went thru the slab with a pile (pushing thru substandard soil (i.e. muck)) to bedrock (oolitic limestone)... then lifted/held the slab. 3' O/C all directions IIRC.

Biscayne National Park (ballast tank room where they store 2 and 3 stage compressed air to refill SCUBA tanks)... about 18-20 years ago. Very cool engineering.

[video:youtube] https://youtu.be/zLcLHgFvYtY[/video]

Put a level on your floor and see what's going on first, then a level on your wall/door casing.

Kent

One must always find the culprit of the settling first and it usually involves H20 and keeping it away from the structure, throw in poor soil conditions to boot. I wish you well in your dilemma. Never an easy fix but there are some outfits out there that are very good. A majority of these basement systems advertised on TV are technically sound fixes but are way too proud of their skills , imho!