Ep 048 - Home Foundations 101: Insights from Bob Brown

Welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where you'll discover strategies to save money, save time, and be better organized in managing your largest financial asset and biggest expense, your home. Your hosts, John Bodrozic and Beth Dodson, who are co-founders of HomeZada, have been supporting homeowners for over 20 years. They are here to share with you their tips and suggestions, as well as interviews with industry experts, with the goal of helping you become a smarter homeowner. Now here's your hosts, John and Beth.

Hi, welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast, and I am Beth Dodson, your host for the day. We are not with John today. He has decided to take the day off, but we are here with Bob Brown, and we are going to talk about foundations. And Bob has been known as the Dirt Guy, and it's all related to foundations. So Bob, I'd like you to talk a little bit more about how we came together and your background. And then I've got a lot of questions for our customers and our audience who are looking at foundations, because you brought up some amazing points on foundations not to be scared of. And so let's get started with your intro. Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Okay, well, let's see. I graduated from Arizona State University, uh, a long time ago, back when we rode dinosaurs to school. And I graduated in architecture and in finance.

Wow.

And I kind of worked my way through college doing concrete repairs and became kind of an expert in concrete repairs. And that sort of led to foundation repair. And so I built about a $20 million company from scratch and sold it 3 years ago. Along with a forensic engineering company. And we had— our engineering company had a full staff of 15 people. That was a pretty large operation, relatively speaking.

That's great.

So, and I wrote a book and published it called Foundation Repair Secrets, and it was a bestseller for a little while. And I've got a couple other books I'm working on, and should be coming out soon. I have a lot of patents, 5 or 6. I can't— I lost count, I think. And I've developed a lot of innovative ideas for the industry over the years. So yeah, that's a little bit about me.

No, that's fantastic. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting about your background as well is the fact that you took this degree and your experience and turned it into a business. And it's all about foundations. And when we talked prior to this podcast, you were talking about how you don't always have to be scared of cracks in your foundation. You need to understand the dirt.

Right. Absolutely. You know, I had a friend in the road business and he said that all roads are made out of dirt. It doesn't matter whether you paint them with asphalt or paint them with concrete. But the dirt itself is what makes up the road. And the same for houses, because, you know, you can have post-tension foundation, you can have all the other foundations in the world, but if the dirt is lousy, you're going to have problems.

Now, so we talked about that dirt soil. What do homeowners need to know about soil as it impacts their foundation? Because I know there's different soil components across the country, whether it's sand, whether it's clay, granite, you name it, there's all kinds of stuff. What is some of the things that people need to know about soil and dirt in overall capacity?

Well, first of all, another myth. The first one was that all cracks are foundation settlement problems, and that's not true. The second myth is that dirt is a simple subject, and it's not. Dirt is a very complicated subject. Dirt is laid down in layers, you know, sedimentary deposits.

Mm-hmm.

And each layer is different, and they're not exactly even. They disappear and come back up, and, you know, they're shifting, and, and there's different mineral contents, different affinities to water, different densities, uh, and some things like clays, when they get wet, they swell. And other things like sand, when they get wet, they're going to consolidate. And so you could have lots of things differently going on. You could have upheaval in some areas and settlement in others, all in the same house, uh, depending on these soil conditions. And so that's why they have what they call geotechnical engineers. And these are the guys that, that are engineers with the soil— soil engineer.

Mm-hmm.

And they take borings all the time. They understand how a geology in a certain area is laid out. And these guys are the experts when it comes to soil, and therefore they should be the guys that we should be listening to when it comes to Foundation performance, building a house, lots of things like that.

No, that's fantastic. And so when it comes to the soil and the dirt, and then we've got these experts that understand this.

Yes.

And then now you've got to pour a foundation.

You've got a what foundation?

You've got to pour it. You've got to lay it down, pour it at the bottom of the house.

Oh, pour it.

Yeah. So you've got to pour it. So when it comes to pouring these foundations, sometimes homeowners at one point when they're building a house, they have— or builders, they have to move in dirt to solidify this foundation.

Right.

Explain a little bit why that's necessary for a good foundation.

Sure. I mean, clays are usually the problematic soil, usually. And so if you have a lot of clays on a particular site, the engineer might recommend, hey, you might want to excavate down a certain distance— 2, 3, 4, maybe 10 feet, you know— get rid of those soils and put something less expansive in, and therefore you're going to have less problems.

Yes.

That's part of the reasoning. And they do other things. They can condition the soil, you know, they can moisten it up, they can compact it. They don't want to over-compact it, which happens a lot, but there's ways you can treat the soil to kind of help with some of these problems in addition to remove and replace.

No, that's fantastic. And so soil is important, dirt is important. So when it comes to the foundation, how do you know if there is damage in a foundation if a crack doesn't always mean Some significant damage.

Right. Well, so one of my phrases that I like to coin is the silent policing of America, which is what's going on. I was on a Facebook commenting page the other day where homeowners get on and say, hey everybody, here's a picture of what's happening with my house. What do you guys think is going on? And then all these salesmen from all these foundation repair companies get on there and go, oh, you should call us right away.

I'll come out.

I'll take care of you. And I'm saying, no, don't do that. Call call a forensic geotechnical engineer. And the one guy pushed back and said, oh no, those engineers—they all live in ivory towers, and they don't really understand what's going on. And you know, I'd say, well, how how do you know if a foundation has failed? Because he was talking about foundation failure, and I said, how do you determine that? He never would answer me. 'Cause he doesn't know. I mean, basically what they do is they go around and they take elevations using a manometer around the house. And if it's a little bit low in one area, then they go, oh, then it's settled. You need to spend $80,000. What? You know, no. Is there any kind of like standard? You know, how do you determine how bad is it, you know, to require work, right? I mean, and almost everybody, Nobody knows. I mean, they're like, well, if it's bad, we'll fix it, you know. Well, you know, so I would ask the question, you know, well, you know, what makes it— you know, they would say, well, Mrs. Jones, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say your house is like an 8.5. And I'd say, well, what scale is that? I've never heard of a 1 to 10 scale before. Is that like the Richter scale of foundation repair? What is that?

Yeah.

And then I'm thinking, well, how did you arrive at 8.5?

Sure.

And the answer would be like, oh, you know, based on all my years of experience and the fact that my kids need braces. Um, I mean, that's the— that's how subjective it is. But, but engineers, they, they have a real live way of doing this numerically, tilt and deflect. And I don't want to go through and bore your audience with all the technical details of it, But there are engineers who are qualified to be able to take up floor elevation readings and develop, using numerical empirical standards that have been accepted in the engineering community, to know, okay, yeah, you're out of tolerance, or no, you're in tolerance and you're just fine. That's some, some of the things that engineers can do.

Okay, that's fantastic. So they— so an engineer can come in A geotechnical engineer can come in, determine if there truly is damage on a foundation versus everyone speculating, right? Only to come in and repair what may not actually be broken.

Right. Well, and here's the other thing. See, everybody wants to know not only how bad is it, but is it going to get worse, right?

Yes.

You know, what's going to happen in the future, you know? And if you ask a structural engineer that, they're like, Well, you're gonna have to talk to a soil engineer because it's a function of the soil.

Correct.

And so the only guys, the, the only guys that can tell you with a certain degree of, uh, you know, probability whether something's going to continue moving, if it's all done moving, sure, or whatever, is a geotechnical engineer. Anybody else that tries to opine about that is BSing you.

Okay, so if there is damage to a foundation, what are some steps that people can do to correct some of that? And damage is variable, obviously.

Yeah, first of all, you have to figure out what's going on. Almost everybody thinks, and one of the myths is that all foundation problems are settlement, which is not true.

Okay.

I mean, you know, if you have edge settlement, that can happen. But you can also have clay soils that swell, and a lot of times they'll swell in the middle. Sometimes they'll swell on the edge of a house, but that causes just as much damage as settlement. I've seen houses heave 9 inches from swelling clays. I mean, that's a lot.

That is a lot.

And that'll tear your house up, trust me. So you have to figure out first what's going on. Now, if you have settlement, if somebody, if a good engineer has developed, you know, okay, here's what I think's going on, Based on my knowledge of the soils and, you know, what I'm seeing on the site and so forth. You got settlement? Okay, the way to fix that is what everybody does, and that is, oh, you put up a steel pier in the ground, or sometimes in softer soils they use concrete piers.

Concrete.

And they go down until refusal, and then they use that to jack up the house and stabilize it, and they use those deeper layers of soil the harder ones down lower to stabilize the house. And those products generally work pretty good. Pretty good. I mean, they're over-engineered. They've had the test of time. They work well. Most of them are really good products. Now, the problem is understanding that's the problem. Now, if you have a heat situation going on—

Right.

It gets a lot more tricky because then really there's not a lot of good solutions out there to solve that problem. There's just not. And so then, you know, well, if it's high in the middle of the house, we're just going to raise the whole perimeter at, you know, $300,000.

Yes.

Well, that's kind of an expensive fix for a heave, and that doesn't even solve the problem because the problem's in the middle of the house, not on the edge of the house.

Right.

So there are, you know, the standard thing is fix your grading and drainage. You know, that's going to solve It's going to sort of solve it, not really, but it'll sort of solve it. I developed a soil drying system called the Moisture Bubble, and that can dry those soils that are heaving from the clays. So that's one solution that's out there.

Okay. Yeah, so one of the things that people need to do is be aware of their grading, be aware of their drainage at all times to avoid any damage. And then the next thing is determine what is your issue. And it could be simple, could be big. And if it is big, it's a significant expense to repair it.

Right. And if it is big, you know, if an engineer says, yep, it's, it's, it's out of tolerance and it's going to keep moving and you're going to have lots of problems and we're going to have to spend this to figure it out. Okay, that's good. Let that engineer develop the plan and then go take his plan and put it out to bid. Because part of the problem is the poor homeowner gets yanked around. They get 3 different contractors to come to their house and give them 3 different bids. And like, one's got piers on this side of the house and one's got piers on this side and one's got piers all the way around. And the home— how's the homeowner going to know which one's right?

Right, exactly.

They're not experts.

Correct.

So the homeowner goes with the one that they're most comfortable with, which is probably the best salesman, not necessarily the best idea or the best diagnosing problem, right? And so get the engineer, get the solution, bid it out, and then let the engineer be the supervisor, what they call a special inspector, that can make sure that the project gets put in per his instructions and his intent. Right? Then the homeowner has a really good diagnosis and a good repair plan. And one of the things that foundation repair companies love to bring up is, hey, don't worry about it. We give a lifetime warranty on our stuff, right? Well, let me tell you something. That lifetime warranty ain't good for jack.

It's terrible.

Hey, I know, I was in the foundation repair business, okay? There are so many loopholes, so many get-out-of-jail-free cards in that thing. Let me just give you an example. So 5 years later, after the project's all done, the homeowner calls the contractor and says, hey, my house is all cracking up, get out here and honor your warranty. Well, the contractor sends out their really experienced guy, right? And he says, oh well, all these cracks are from heave, and it says right here in our contract that piers can't fix heave, and so we don't warranty for heave, so have a nice life. And then the homeowner's scratching their head going, okay, but wait, wait, wait, if it's all heave, then didn't you diagnose it wrong? And then the contractor says, oh well, I mean, we're not engineers, we're just dumb contractors, you know. Of course, that's not what they say the first time they show up. They're like, oh, we're smarter than engineers, you know, we're the, we're the greatest, you know, we know all this stuff. Of course, it's all just verbal bull, right? I mean, there's nothing to back it up.

Yeah, so basically, if anyone is suspecting any foundation damage, the first thing to do is to hire an engineer to come out and at least inspect the soil, the foundation itself, and an engineer may be able to propose a fix or at least review fixes.

Yeah.

Yeah, from all the other proposed organizations. Now, if there is foundation damage, how much, like, the ranges have you seen in your business that it can cost homeowners? Because I know that, that, like, There's foundation damage, like it scares the living crazy out of somebody.

Oh yeah.

What is that kind of cost range? I mean, it could be anything.

Oh, all over the map.

Okay.

You know, it can, it can be as little as $3,000. I've done $300,000 repairs many times. I did a $6 million repair once.

Ooh.

Okay. So, you know, you can have, I mean, it varies. I would say that the average foundation repair underpinning project nowadays is probably in the $50,000 range.

Okay.

A lot of them are $60,000 and $70,000, and those prices keep going up and up and up. And the fact of the matter is, a lot of people spend their life savings, which is fine. I mean, if it really needs to be done, you're protecting the value of your house. I get it.

Correct.

Does it really need to be done? And is it really the right plan? Right?

Correct.

A lot of people think, oh, you know, that the foundation repair salesman will say to the customer, oh, don't worry, don't worry, when we pull permits, our engineer is going to look this thing over and they're going to make sure everything's good. That is a bald-faced lie, and I'll tell you why. Because the engineer did not gather the original data, and so he could lose his license by opining and recommending off of data that he doesn't collect.

Ah, so, okay.

When they go to pull permits, the only thing that the cities are checking for, the only thing, is what we call a spacing plan. You're putting these piers in the ground around the perimeter. You want to make sure that they're not too far apart because then the house would droop between them.

Yeah.

So they want to make sure they're close enough together to be able to handle the span. That's really the only thing that the permits require. You could have the permits, you could have the piers on the wrong side of the house, you could have too many, too little, you may not even need piers at all. And the permitting processes in today's cities do nothing, nothing, zilch, nothing to correct for any of that. They don't check it.

So, so it's really, so I hear some of the messages that you're saying is As a homeowner, be responsible for your home and hire the right engineer for, for you to evaluate all this? And one, where do they find those kinds of engineers?

Well, let me first address the first problem, and that is these engineers are not free.

Yes.

And the foundation repair companies, well, they're going to come out to your house for free. and give you their analysis.

Sure.

But it's not really analysis. It's a sales pitch dressed up to look like analysis. And you're gonna have to pay $1,000, $1,500, maybe $2,000 to have an engineer. Well, that's a good, you know, that's, that's a lot more than free, right? So the way— the first thing I say is, look, if you were really sick and you didn't know what was wrong with you and you were really sick, I mean, like you know, incapacitated, sick, right? Would you go to a doctor and pay good money, or would you go for free to a pharmaceutical rep?

Correct.

I can't think of anybody that would go to a pharmaceutical rep to be diagnosed with a problem. Sorry.

Yeah, they would actually want the full complete understanding of what is wrong with them. So I, I hear what you're saying. So If you suspect that there's some sort of foundational issue with your home, invest in an engineer so that you can get a clear analysis. And it's basically your clear diagnosis, right, of what is wrong with your foundation. And then that diagnosis can be used when you are getting bids from contractors on how to do the repair.

Right. Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. And you can find— I mean, I've got a directory. If you go to foundationrepairsecrets.com, which is my website, there's a directory for free. I don't charge anybody to be in it. I don't charge anybody to access it.

That's awesome.

Just trying to help people out. Okay. Yeah. Help connect people. And I've got pretty much engineers in there for every state. So you can find somebody. You know, I haven't vetted every single one of those engineers, but I've gone onto their websites.

Some of them I've vetted, I know pretty well.

But others, I just kind of peruse their website to make sure they do residential and forensics, you know.

Yes.

And so, and like I said, if you can find the geotech, some structural engineering firms have geotechs on board, which is fine, but, you know, some geotechnical input is what I think is what's needed. And then, you know, let me tell you, I wrote a blog about all the different ways you're going to save money by hiring an engineer in the first place. And you can access that blog on that same website.

Okay. We'll make sure we include it in the show notes too.

And one of them is, I'll tell you, is that there's a, you know, a contractor had a big yacht and the name of the yacht was Change Order. And then he had a dinghy that he pulled on the back and that was the original bid. And that's what happens. So you get out to the site and the contractor says, oh, Mr. Jones, yeah, you're gonna need 5 more piers. Yeah, you're gonna need to come up with another 12 grand. Oh, you gotta be kidding me. No, I'm not, I'm not paying for any more. Well, Mr. Jones, if you don't do this, then we can't give you our lifetime warranty that's Gold-plated and worth everything in the world. And then the homeowner doesn't know. They're like, okay, oh, I'll cough up another 12 grand for you. Uh, now if you have an engineer that has diagnosed it in the first place and the contractor comes along and says you need to add 5 more piers, that the engineer is going to say, well, you know, I'm the one that diagnosed this, so you better explain this to me and you better have good reason because I understand this better than you do. And that's the way you can get protected. So right there, you're going to save a ton of money just with that, with the engineers.

No, that's fantastic because I'm a firm believer in oftentimes you've got to make an investment into whatever you're doing around your house in order for it to pay itself out on the other end. And I'm a firm believer as well is if you can mitigate some of the risk that you would get with, with some other situations, why wouldn't you try to do that to get something more accurately fixed and repaired? And let's face it, everyone's got different skill levels.

Right.

And so, and they're trained differently with different skill levels. So why wouldn't you leverage the skill of an engineer when it comes to foundations and dirt and soil versus not? And for me, it's the same thing when it comes to maintenance. If a homeowner doesn't have experience in electric and plumbing, don't do it. Do not do it.

Yeah, don't try it. So the fact of the matter is that the guys that come out to your house from the foundation repair companies, uh, what are their qualifications?

Yeah.

Their qualifications are that they were selling used cars last year and they found a better job that pays more. They get a 10% commission, most of them, for everything they sell, and there's no salary. It's all commission. And so those guys do pretty well. They make $200,000 to $300,000 a year. I even know one that makes $900,000 a year selling this stuff. So they can— and if you don't make at least $100,000 a year, they kick you to the curb, just so you know. So these guys don't have any degrees in anything, and they're not supervised by anybody. The only supervision they get is from their their sales manager who wants to make sure that they're selling enough. And that's it.

They're bringing in the, in the income.

Nobody checks them to make sure that their designs are the right designs.

So in addition to checking your grading and managing your water coming from your house, is there any other type of maintenance that homeowners can do to protect their foundation?

Well, first of all, you need to realize what are the local conditions. Okay, and what do I mean by that? So in Phoenix, where I built my business, it's a very dry area. It's been dry for a long time.

Yes.

And so you don't want to introduce additional water around the perimeter of a foundation. The name of the game in Phoenix is to get the water away.

Yes.

Now, if you're in Houston, totally different story.

Totally.

It's a wet area, or maybe Louisiana, right? New Orleans or something like that. It's been wet for, for hundreds of thousands of years.

Yes.

And so now, if it dries out on the edges, you could have settlement. So you don't want to be like getting the water away like you do in Phoenix, right? You want to put a soaker around the house with a timer on it and actually water the entire perimeter, keep it wet. So it depends on the area you're in, and I wish I had a better answer for you, but—

That's okay.

Most of the time you want to manage— you want all the perimeters of the house to be the same. So for instance, if you're in a dry area, you want the dry areas all the way around the house. If you want, you know, if you're in a wet area, Well, you know, you might have some concrete up against the house. Well, that's going to keep it pretty dry. And maybe you have, you know, irrigation on the other side of the house. Well, that, that's going to create a differential. And so you want to be careful not to have too much differential no matter what area you're in.

Yeah.

So, but I would say managing the water one way or another is the key. And so what you want to do is find out, you know, okay, what area am I in? What's the name of the game here? What's And then what, what, like if you're in a drier, you know, area, they have what they call a Thornthwaite map. And you can go online, look it up, and it tells you whether you're in a dry— it's got a little map of the United States, tells you whether it's wet or dry. And you can look that up. I mean, you kind of know if you live in the desert, you're in a dry area, you know. If there's lots of pine trees all around, you know, oh, you're probably in a wet area, you know.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you live on the coast of Oregon, Gonna be pretty wet, probably, right?

Correct.

Over the mountains on the backside of Oregon, it's gonna be pretty dry.

Correct. Yeah, no, that's fantastic. And so one of the statements that you said as well is cracks in the concrete is not something— in the foundation is not something you need to stress over.

No.

Explain a little bit more about that.

2 kinds of concrete: concrete that's cracked and concrete that's gonna crack. That's, that's it. I mean, the, uh, concrete is a brittle material. It's gonna crack. It's, you know, when you first pour concrete, it's in a liquid state, right?

Yes.

And as it goes to a hardened state, it shrinks. It, you know, it goes through a chemical process where the hydrogen from water becomes decoupled and leaves, and the oxygen binds with the new materials. Well, you're losing it. You're losing an element. When you lose an element, it's going to shrink. And so that's why in sidewalks you see those joints every 4 feet, right? Those joints are there so that hopefully, hopefully—

Hopefully.

Hopefully it's going to crack in those joints and it won't look so bad. That's the idea with those joints. And driveways have joints in them and things. That's the whole idea for having driveways. So people say to me, oh man, look at this crack in the joint of the driveway. I'm like, good, that's where it's supposed to be. And they're like, what?

Correct.

All concrete cracks. Now, if you're in a house in a temperature-controlled area, you know, you've got heating and cooling, it's not gonna like get freezing cold or boiling hot, right? Temperature controlled. You're gonna have less cracking because one of the cracks that occurs in concrete is what we call thermal cracking. When it expands, it grows. When it shrinks, when it's cold, it shrinks.

Yeah.

And that thermal cracking, that thermal movement causes cracking. And inside of a house, you probably have less of it. Outside, you have more of it. So theoretically, in a house, you should have less, but I've seen an awful lot of cracks. I mean, sometimes the house sits vacant for a while, right? And it's gonna get really hot in there, you know, or it might get really cold if you're up north or something, right?

Mm-hmm.

So you're gonna get some movement, but cracks don't mean failure, especially floor cracks or concrete cracks. You just, it's part of the business. You're gonna have cracks. Lots of different reasons for cracks, but you're still gonna get them. Yeah. And you, and you can't stop them. And it doesn't mean failure. It doesn't mean the end of the world. You know, I had one guy that had like 1-inch wide cracks in his concrete. And he said to me, oh, he said, I didn't know whether to demolish the house or commit suicide. Neither. Neither. Not that big of a deal.

No, neither. No. Oh my gosh, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for all your experience. Now tell us again, The website and your book that people can read?

Well, they're both the same thing, foundationrepairsecrets.com, and you can get the book on there or on Amazon or whatever. Perfect. And, and, you know, go to my blog. You'll learn a lot from the blog. I try not to be too technical and jargony with it, but if you, if you find yourself reading it and you're like, I don't know what that means, call me or email me, whatever. I'll talk to you about it.

That's fantastic. Oh my goodness, thank you so much, Bob, for having— for being here on Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast. We really appreciate this information. I know our audience is going to find value, and they will stress less about concrete, and they will become more intelligent about their foundations in dealing with contractors and what have you as it relates to any repairs. So I'm super excited about that.

Cool.

So thank you so much, and until next time. Thank you for joining us on Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. If you guys find any of this valuable, please share it and like it and send it to whomever needs to hear it. And maybe you know somebody who has a crack in their foundation and who needs to de-stress and needs to hear this podcast. Have a great day.

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