The CrackDaddy extols another interesting case study...this time about a huge home addition that caused a major concrete foundation issue for the homeowner.
Narrator: It’s time once again for the “Crack Man Podcast” hosted by A1 Foundation Crack Repair. I’m Darren Kincaid here with the Crack Daddy himself, Adam Tracy. Adam and The Crack Man Rich have over 30 years’ experience in the construction industry. Rich as over 25 years as the president and founder of A1 Foundation Crack Repair. This podcast provides expert basement waterproofing, concrete repair, and preventative maintenance tips for homeowners and businesses. A1 Foundation’s valuable insight will help avert a disastrous flood within the basement, health problems associated with water infiltration, and protect your biggest investment….your home. Huge home addition causes a major concrete foundation issue for a homeowner.
Narrator: So, Adam, you have another interesting case study for us today. What can you tell us about it?
Adam: Yes. So this particular property was down in Plymouth, Massachusetts and it was somebody looking at buying a house and they went through a home inspection process and there was a large addition put on to this house, probably around 1,200 square foot addition to the home. It's a very large addition, and part of the addition was a large family room with some bathrooms and the normal house stuff. But the other part of it was the garage, and with this particular house they actually poured a basement type foundation under both the garage and the family room.
There was no real access to that basement area from the outside, outside of a small crawl space window. So, the homeowners never really went in there, they never really saw anything down below because it was, for the most part, inaccessible unless you really wanted to kind of find your way into a small crawl space hole, so it lasts for 25 years without any issues. And so they found that there were some major structural issues going on above the garage in the home inspection.
The home inspector was able to kind of go underneath into that crawl space area to see what was going on, to help the new homeowners trying to figure out what the situation was. And what we found was pretty shocking. Around the entire perimeter of this concrete foundation was a horizontal crack. Horizontal cracks are generally signified as a more structural type of foundation crack versus a standard vertical crack that we see all the time in residential concrete. So, this concrete crack went all the way around the entire perimeter of the house with major deflection showing on the garage side.
We got a call from the realtor and prospective buyer to kind of help understand what this issue is. And in this issue, as we did a little bit more uncovering, we looked at the original plans that were submitted to the building department. There was never expected to be a garage space. When they designed the footing for this particular house, in this edition, it was not sized to have precast concrete and weighted vehicles on one side. It overweight the foundation walls and it drove the footing down into the soil further than it was supposed to be, and then you had a major shift in the walls because of it.
It was really uncovered by chance because it was kind of in a weird spot and it was not necessarily something that the homeowners would have noticed until they started seeing issues upstairs, which, they were minor issues, at least to them in their eyes, just kind of looked like normal settling. But the more you look, the more you found that there were, you know, larger issues at play here. So this particular case is going to be probably underpinning the foundation which is not working. We people can get into, but it will help kind of guide the buyers into finding the right type of contractors and what they're going to look for in this.
So, it's kind of a strange situation, we don't see these ones every day, especially in the large building edition. Usually, they're checked by the building department pretty thoroughly, but this one seems to kind of get through and was this, and unfortunately they have some major work here to kind of bring that foundation back up and make sure that there's no further structural issues.
Narrator: Well, Adam, I guess homeowners never know what kinds of foundation issues are lurking around their homes. I wish them the best of luck dealing with it.
Narrator: If you have a basement water problem and think you need a professional, or, if you’d like more information on foundation crack repair and basement waterproofing topics, please visit A1FoundationCrackRepair.com or call Rich at (866) 929-3171. Or you can email Rich at info@a1foundationcrackrepair.com. Thanks for listening and keep that basement dry.