Spotting Structural
Problems in a Home
Home Inspector’s Guide To
Greg Madsen and Richard McGarry McGarry and Madsen
Here’s some suggestions for giving your next potential house purchase a careful look-over for signs of structural problems:
1) The best place to start checking is from across the street. Big-scale defects that are not apparent when you are just a few feet from the walls are easier to spot at a distance. The two buildings in a condominium complex shown in the photo above, for example, are leaning significantly out-of-plumb, tilting to-wards each other. There were only a few cracks in the walls, because they had settled evenly, and the outrageous extent of their tilt only becomes clear from a long view.
2) While standing away from the house, also check the ridge line of the roof and the fascia line to look for any noticeable sagging, which is a sign of dam-age, settlement, or poor construction. It helps to hold up any straight-edged object, like a notepad, when you sight along the building’s lines.
3) As you walk around the exterior of the house, stop at each corner and look down the length of the wall with your face a few inches from the surface, searching for any areas that are bowing inward or outward.
4) Look for exterior wall cracks, especially ones that have opened more than 1/8”, cracks emanating from the corners of windows and doors, cracks that have one side higher than the other, and ones that show signs of having been repaired but have opened again. Take your time, and be sure to sweep your view up and down as you go along.
5) Look for signs of building components that are moving apart, such as where a chimney connects to an exterior wall, lines where perpendicular walls meet, or where exterior decks or landings connect to the house.
6) Test the windows and doors to make sure they open freely. Cracked win-dow panes can be a sign of a buildup of structural stress or movement in a wall. Also, any missing interior doorways should be checked carefully. When the frame is so out-of-square that the door no longer functions, sometimes the door is removed as a quick-fix.
7) Feel the floors under your feet as you walk, both for any sloping areas and soft spots. If possible, have any background music or television sound turned off during the walk-around. This makes it easier to hear any loose floor tile or creaking floor boards.
8) As you examine the interior and note any floor, wall or ceiling problems, try to correlate them with your exterior findings. How do they line up? Does a crack running across a concrete floor, for example, align with any structural distress you observed in the exterior walls? In the photo below, a badly out-of-square door frame was above a damaged pier under the home.
The significance of wall cracks in particular, unless they are gaping and omi-nous, is best left for a professional to interpret. A few minor settlement cracks should be expected, especially in an older home, and a pro can sort out the actual problems from the cosmetic defects for you.
If you or your home inspector’s review of the home’s structure turns up issues, you can determine whether the house is a good buy by getting answers to the following three questions:
1) What is the cause of the problem?
Your home inspector can talk to you about the extent of the problem and point out where there is visual evidence. In the picture above, for example, there is a stair-stepping crack with “differential,” meaning that one face of the crack has moved forward of the other. Unfortunately, evidence of structural problems in the early stages are not always recognizable to the average homebuyer. Occasionally we inspect a home where the buyer tells us that “the house seems alright to me but I thought it was a good idea to have a home inspec-tion anyway,” only to have to advise them that they have significant structural issues that require repair.
We know of three primary causes for structural problems due a defect in the ground under a home in the Gainesville area: soil subsidence (the washing away or movement of the soil, typically from a higher to lower elevation), clay soil (which expands during wet weather and contracts during dry spells, caus-ing up-and-down heavcaus-ing), and sink holes (the partial or complete collapse of the limestone karst layer under a home, causing moderate to severe settle-ment).
To an extent, the cause of the problem determines what type of repair is re-quired. The next step is to have an evaluation by a structural engineer, who will also provide a plan for repair.
2) What is the cost of the repair?
The seller or seller’s realtor will sometimes provide an estimate from a local foundation repair company to the buyer as part of the disclosures. Read the estimate carefully. Does it include only stabilizing the home? Are cosmetic re-pairs to the exterior included? How about rere-pairs to the interior cracks, and door and window repairs?
What is the guarantee? Typically, a foundation repair company only guaran-tees the area in which they make repairs. So if settlement at the back left cor-ner of the home has been repaired, a new set of cracks in the front left corcor-ner of the home in the future represents additional work that you have to pay for.
We occasionally inspect a home with clear evidence of structural distress, where the sellers present us with documentation that the problem was
re-paired by a licensed foundation contractor, based on specifications prepared by a structural engineer—only to have to advise them that the problems we saw are in the opposite corner of the home from the repaired area shown in their documentation drawings.
3) Is it a “rented suit”?
There’s a joke that Warren Buffet, the billionaire investor, likes to tell about evaluating long-term risk: “A fellow traveling abroad got a call from his sister to tell him that his dad has died. The brother replied that it was impossible for him to get home for the funeral; he volunteered, however, to shoulder its cost. Upon returning, the brother received a bill from the mortuary for $4,500, which he promptly paid. A month later, and a month after that also, he paid $10 pur-suant to an add-on invoice. When a third $10 invoice came, he called his sis-ter for an explanation. ‘Oh,’ she replied, ‘I forgot to tell you. We buried dad in a rented suit.’”
Some houses with structural problems are like Warren’s rented suit. If the cost of repair only fixes the damage done by the geological defect under the home, but not the underlying cause, then the settlement or heaving will con-tinue and may keep you paying new repair bills every few years.
Talk to the structural engineer that prepared the repair plan about the likeli-hood of further settlement or heaving in years to come. There are no guaran-tees, only a judgement of possibilities. So it’s a good idea to add in some additional future cost when you calculate whether the price of the house plus the cost of immediate repairs equals a good deal.
For an in-depth review of the multiple causes of foundation problems and examples of the visible symptoms, we suggest visiting the “Signs & Symp-toms” page of the RamJack Foundation Contractor website at:
http://www.ramjacksf.com/signs.php ©2013 - McGarry and Madsen Inspection
McGarry and Madsen Inspection 10251 S.W. 92nd St.
Gainesville, FL 32608
www.mcgarryandmadsen.com [email protected] 352-283-1385 or 352-494-2437
