Northern California Real Estate Agent: Seeing cracks in your foundation?

Today we're talking about what to do when you find stress cracks in or around your home. Hey, this is Andrew Lam, team leader of the Lamb team at RE Max Gold. Today we're talking about foundation issues and how to repair them and whether or not you need to call in a foundation specialist. But before we get to that, we want to draw your attention to two links on the the blog. If you are looking for a home to purchase, feel free to click the Search all homes link. It is your backstage pass to the mls. And if you are looking to find out what your home is worth in today's market, we have been selling homes in just a matter of days for well over asking price. So we're probably thinking about it right now. Because you're seeing homes sell so fast, feel free to click the free home value report link and that will let you know what homes around you are selling for, give you a range of what your home could sell for. And if you want to get a specific number, feel free to give us a call. We'd love to chat with you about these specific upgrades and the things that make your home unique compared to other homes in the area. Now back to our topic at hand today. I'm joined by Steve over at Bay Area Underpinning. Let's get into it.

Hey everyone, thanks for joining us. Andrew Lamb here, team leader of the Lamb team era, Max Gold with Steve from Bay Area Underpinning. Today we're talking about foundation issues, things that actually could happen more often than other places in Solano county because of the type of soil we have, things like that. But just kind of general questions we get from home inspections, from buyers looking at certain homes, seeing cracks and things like that. So Steve, first question, when someone sees a crack along a wall or kind of at a junction of a ceiling and a wall, what does that usually mean?

Well, it could be signs of settlement from typical settlement from being on expensive clays. It could be signs of a more major problem. It's usually good to get it checked out to see usually if there's one crack, there's going to be more.

Okay.

And I've noticed that especially in Vacaville and Fairfield, certain parts of Solano county, as opposed to Dixon, experience a lot more of those settling cracks than other areas. And you mentioned expansive soils. Could you talk about that?

Yeah. So these areas have a lot of farmland, a lot of expansive soils. The clay soils are real. They're really vulnerable to wet and, you know, wet seasons, dry seasons, few years of drought. Now everything's drying out people are seeing a lot of movement in their foundations, Especially even a lot of the houses built in the last 15, 20 years. They're seeing a lot of. A lot of movement now just because. Just the inconsistency in the soil conditions. So a lot of the dryness is just, you know, retracting, and houses are just settling a little bit.

Yeah, no, we do have this kind of, I guess, adobe sort of clay soil that expands and contracts a lot with groundwater during the drought. Groundwater pretty much gone. Yeah. So the house settles quite a bit. What do you see happening when this El Nino comes and we have all this moisture again?

That's a good question. I mean, a lot of people will see a lot of change in their house. A lot of, you know, like right now, as it settles, when that ground gets saturated again, the house will rebound a little bit. Most of the time, it never comes back up to where it once was. And as soon as it's over, maybe season or two down the road, it'll eventually dry out again. And what happens over the years, it kind of just gradually will settle a little more. Kind of never comes back up to where it once was.

So kind of a never ending compacting, expanding.

Yeah, exactly.

Constantly going down a little bit at a time. Okay, so let's say, and usually we get a home inspection and the inspector will note the cracks. But if it's something major, he will generally call it out and say, okay, get a foundation repair expert out here to take a look. That's typically what we would call you. Let's say that's the case when people call you. What do you come out and do that a home inspector can't?

So when a home inspector asks us to come out, it's usually past their qualifications. They want a foundation expert to look at it. So what we do is we visually check the foundation for any cracks or any obvious signs of movement. After that, we measure the footprint of the house and we do a floor elevation survey of the inside of the house. And that will tell us if anything's moved at all. If it's normal, you know, it'll show us where the pinpoint spots that have moved and by how much. That way we can pinpoint an exact repair for the house.

Okay. And typical repairs, when, let's say one area, let's say just one corner of the house is settled more than the rest of the house, what needs to be done in that situation.

So in that case, mostly out here at Fairfield vacuole area, we use what's called resistance Piers, the steel pier that mounts to the foundation. We drive down steel, steel piers sections until we hit load bearing strata in the affected area. You know, you could have eight piers, you could have 12 piers, depending on whatever the house needs. Once all the piers are driven, then we hook it to a hydraulic system and just reload the house.

Okay, so if people have questions about their current home, maybe they're thinking of selling it, but they know some something's a little off. Or maybe they're just walking around their main level and hearing some weird squeaky sounds and trying to figure out what's going on. How do they get in touch with you?

They can call us directly or so through a network. They can call you, of course. Yeah, they just call our office directly. We have a receptionist that answers the phone. If they don't answer for some reason, they'll call you back within 5 or 10 minutes. Usually. Set up appointment on the spot and we'll come out and check it out.

Awesome. Well, thank you very much for being here and answering our questions. Thank you very much.

All right. Hey, thanks for joining us on our video blog today. We hope that information was useful. If you have any questions at all, feel free to give me a call or drop us a line here at the blog and make it a great day.