How To Spot Foundation Failures Early

Jamie: 00:00:01

Welcome to Thoughts from the Crawl Space, a podcast where our goal as home inspection experts is to support and serve our community.

Whether you're a homeowner, home buyer, real estate agent, or investor, we believe everyone deserves solutions to their homeownership challenges and inspiration along the way. Your path to success starts here. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Thoughts from the Crawl Space.

Today we're going to dive into 11 signs of foundation failure.

You know, whether you've lived in your house for quite a while or you just bought it, or you're considering a home, knowing the signs to look for on a foundation and the condition that it's in is an excellent opportunity for you to take control, for you to be able to call who you need to call to take care of the problem or know that it's not problem at all.

So let's talk about some things today in how a foundation is judged, what you need to know about it, and what might be causing what you see in the home. So let's dive right in. You know, foundation problems are problems you don't want to ignore.

If they're left unchecked, they can lead to significant structural damage and extremely costly repair. So it's like anything, the longer you let it go, the worse it gets.

So probably the world's most famous example of foundation failure was the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

You've probably all heard that story and you heard it in school growing up, and it was caused by unstable soil and a foundation that was too shallow but continues to still stand. So is it a problem or not? So a luxury 31 story luxury high rise in South Padre Island, Texas had to be demolished because of this kind of thing.

So on one hand, the Powder of Pisa leading tower Visa stays. On another hand, a whole high rise had to be demolished because of soil problems. These are extreme cases, we'll grant you that.

However, they highlight the importance of foundations. When you see those massive structures, skyscrapers being built, years of planning and engineering went into those foundations.

You don't have that for a single family residential home maybe or even an apartment complex.

But there are issues that if this was not done right by the builder, then they need to be followed up on and you're going to have problems if, if they didn't do it right. So when we do a home inspection, we're looking for various signs that there's a problem.

Typically with our routine, we're going to start outside, we're going to look for signs outside. What are some signs outside that you might see foundation problems in the actual house. Well, here's a couple.

Number one, if you have concrete settling all around the house, your back patio has cracked and slopes toward the house, your driveway has cracks and slopes other than where it was intended when you first built the house or bought the house, maybe your front porch is settled toward the house. Now, all these can be independent and don't necessarily indicate structural problems.

But if you have a pattern around the house of significant cracking, I'm talking about the hairline cracks that all concrete does.

But if you have significant settlement heaving all around the house, you could have some unstable soil around there, and that could pretend to have problems with the actual foundation walls themselves. So we're looking for signs. We're also going to be looking in the foundation walls themselves for cracks.

Now, in some homes, especially a slab foundation, you usually do not see much of the concrete sticking out above the ground.

Maybe if you're lucky and the builder was, was a, you know, ahead of his time, so to speak, you might see 5, 6, 7, 8 inches sticking above the ground. Where you can see, have there been cracks here? Or, you know, is it hairline crack? Is it offset? Is it an inch? Is it a half inch wide?

If it is an inch, let me just hint, you got a big problem. So all those little things outside we're looking for, we see a hairline crack here or there, not a big deal. We see a pattern, bigger deal.

We see cracks that have been filled and re cracked, that's a bigger deal. So all those things go into it. But once we move inside is where we're really looking for signs of a problem.

Whether this is a slab foundation, a crawl space, or a basement. And with a crawl space in a basement, just for a variety of reasons, that's going to be toward the end of the inspection.

Other people might have a different routine. That's fine. When you run water, water goes down.

So we want to run the water first, then go in the basement, see if there's leaks and things like that. And also when we are inside, on the main level or upstairs, we're looking for signs of a problem.

For example, number one, the title of this podcast, 11 Signs of Foundation Failure. Failure is a pretty strong term. We could say movement, we could say shifting, settlement, that kind of thing.

But regardless, a foundation is designed to support the house. And if it's not doing that in any way, that's, I guess, technically considered a failure of the foundation. So number one, sticking windows and doors.

When your foundation moves even a small amount, you might notice a difficulty opening or closing windows and doors. This happens because the slight shift in the foundation causes the frames around the windows and the doors to shift as well. Think about your windows.

Where are they all located? Of course, they're on the perimeter, right? That's right above the footer, right above the foundation wall.

So if your wall is moving, the rest of your house is moving. That's why foundation problems can become a problem in daily operation of the home.

Now, if we go to a house and we're inspecting it, and you have casement windows, casement are the ones that they have a handle. You crank them out, crank them back in. Some have the whole handle crank, some have the thumb cranks. Whoever invented thumb cranks should be fired.

But regardless, both of them are supposed to open the window and close the window with no problem. If you have shifting in settlement in your foundation, you will inevitably have problems with your casement windows.

So if we go through an entire house and the casement windows open wonderfully, and they close wonderfully, first of all, that's almost a miracle. Second of all, that indicates to me we don't have any significant foundation settlement or movement on this house.

It's almost always a 100% clear case in that scenario.

However, if we have windows that maybe they go out halfway or you try to crank them back and they don't want to come back, now that could be a hardware issue. Doesn't always mean it's a foundation problem problem.

But generally a casement window that kind of binds in the frame, like you crank it out, and all of a sudden it just stops. Well, something's crooked, something has moved. Chances are it's a foundation issue once in a while.

It's just poor installation, but that's definitely a sign. Double hung windows do the same thing. You unlock them, you go to pull them up, and it doesn't want to go very far. Why is that?

And maybe this is only happening on one side of the house. And so windows are really a key in diagnosing foundation problems. Along that same line is doors.

Now, doors are obviously you have some on the perimeter, your, your entrance and exit doors, but you have a lot of interior doors for bedrooms and such. And that's a little different issue in some cases.

Now, some people want to group foundation together with structure, and that's fine for the purpose of this podcast today, we'll talk about both.

But if you have interior doors not closing properly, you don't have the right gap around the top or the sides or the latch doesn't line up with the striker plate or they're hitting the frame or they're just flat out crooked in the frame. If you have multiple doors doing that, that is a sign structurally that something's happened or was not installed right or whatever.

Especially in a two story house.

If we go into a two story house and we go upstairs and we start up there and we're closing doors and opening windows and such, and we have multiple doors especially kind of concentrated in the same general area that don't close properly, that is a sign, number one, that we got something going on in the foundation, whether it's a crawl space or a basement. And we need to investigate that. So that's exactly why we do what we do. Go through the interior first. It will give you signs of foundation problems.

Number two, cracks in flooring. You can have cracked vinyl, poured concrete or tile floor coverings. These can indicate foundation problems.

Of course, ceramic tiles and vinyl flooring can be damaged by dropping things on them. All right, so again, don't jump to conclusions. We want to look at signs. However, that's usually one or more one or, you know, a few tiles.

If you see a crack that runs along a grout line on your tile or worse through the tile, that's an indicator that something's going on. So it's like brick on the outside of a home. Most modern homes are the brick is just siding. It's not structural.

But because it's basically mortar, concrete mixture between the bricks, it's a hard substance and it reveals foundation movement. All right, vinyl siding won't reveal foundation movement near as easily because it's flexible and it's designed to move. Brick is not, stone is not.

So if you see cracks in those outside, then that's a sign that you got some shifting going on. Same with ceramic tile inside.

If it's in the kitchen and you got significant multiple cracks throughout the kitchen, most likely it's because the substrate that was installed under the tile is not strong enough. Most people know when you put ceramic tile on a floor, you need to have, you need to build up your floor to the proper thickness so it doesn't.

So it's more rigid, so it doesn't flex. If it flexes, tile is going to crack. It just will. It's a cement based product and ceramic, very rigid.

And while it's very strong, it doesn't flex and you don't want it to. Number three, uneven or bowing floors. Now this is something that's obvious. You walk through a floor and there's a dip in it.

You notice that right away, the less shoes, the less boots you have on. Barefoot's best. You'll notice it much more likely. You know, nowadays they have carpet that has very thick carpet padding.

And sometimes it's not as easy to pick up subtle little differences in the flooring, the unevenness of the floor. So take your time on that. But I inspected a home a few weeks back where there was clearly a dip in the floor.

And so immediately my mind was like, there's something going on downstairs that's structural. How do I find it? You go downstairs and as luck would have it, the whole basement ceiling was covered in a suspended ceiling.

The tiles that you can move, hopefully. And so I was able to lift a few up and right there, sure enough, they had the floor trusses. Floor trusses are similar to attic trusses.

They're an engineered product. They're put together with two by fours and gusset plates.

And they're designed to span long distances so you don't have to have support posts or walls as often. Great product, except you're not able to alter it. And these had been altered.

They had cut out a big chunk to put a toilet and then they had cut three or four in a row to put furnace in ductwork in. And so we had a, I think four out of five. They're usually spaced two feet apart. So within 10ft we had at least four of them cut.

Created a big dip in the floor. It was in the, in a main walking area near the kitchen. That's going to be a high traffic area. That's one reason it's settling.

But it's going to continue to settle until something gets corrected on that. So that's definitely an uneven or bowing floor. Now, bowed floors are a little different. Most of the time, bowing would have to do with moisture.

Like if you have a wooden floor and it's buckling or something like that, that's a different issue in general, not always, but most of the time that's going to be all right. Number four. So back to the 11 signs. Number one is sticking windows and doors. Number two is cracks in the flooring.

Number three is uneven or bowing floors. Number four is cracked or bowing walls.

Now, this seems pretty obvious when we ask folks ahead of time on an inspection, what are you most concerned about with this house? You know, usually there's some nervous laughter when they say something like, well, I just want to make sure it's not falling down.

Well, I can be about 99.9% sure this house isn't going to fall down on you, barring some major catastrophe. But usually what they mean is, I want to know my foundation is secure. I want to know the walls are straight and strong and not bowing in.

And that's definitely one sign of a foundation problem is cracked or bowed exterior, interior, or basement walls. So if you have wallpaper, you might notice some tears in it. Wallpaper does move a little. It's a little flexible.

But if you have tears in it or maybe in the corner, you have a big wrinkle, that's a sign something's moving in or out. So along that same line, you're going to look for cracks between the windows and doors in the ceiling or floor, as well as cracks in the drywall.

One of the most common signs that we see of some settlement is above door frames. You'll see, like, a diagonal crack in the drywall. Now, why is it above door frames?

Well, inherently, any opening in a wall is the weak point in that wall. Same with windows or doors cut out of concrete walls. That's the weak point in the wall.

And so when something moves, it's going to follow the course of least resistance. And so if you see cracks above your doors, that's why you probably have some settlement. Now, some is okay. If the crack is flat, it's hairline.

That's one thing. If it's offset, one side's pushing out further than the other, and it's wider than a quarter inch, Then we have some issues we need to discuss.

But that's definitely a sign of some type of foundation failure. Number five, wall rotation.

When the soil underneath your home's exteriors get saturated with water, the weight of the building pushing down on the foundation causes the outside edge of the foundation to sink deeper into the soil. All right, so think about that. Tons of water. The house was. The foundation supposedly was compacted before they put the foundation wall.

But now if that gets saturated, things are going to settle more because now it's waterlogged and not as strong. So in contrast, the dry inside edge of the foundation pulls up. This is called wall rotation, and it's a severe problem.

So in other words, you got one side of the wall going this way, one side going that way, and you're rotating your wall. Did again, did a home inspection this week where there were definitely signs that that had happened to the front wall of a house.

It was bowed in quite a bit, probably 4 to 5 inches. Someone had come in and added some pilasters for. For support and had done some professional repairs on it.

But what clearly was happening prior to that was some kind of wall rotation, bowing, a significant issue that needed to be addressed. Another thing you might see on a foundation wall is a horizontal crack, right? And horizontal cracks are fairly common on block walls.

Very uncommon on poured concrete walls.

But back to the block walls, if you see horizontal cracks wider than, let's say, a quarter inch and ongoing, meaning you can see clean breaks, it's ongoing. That means your wall is pushing in.

That means the wall is not stopping the forces of nature, which is designed to keep out soil and water pressure, right? That means that's not happening.

Block walls are just susceptible to that, especially if you have exposure, expansive soils like clay, which will, you know, dry out and crack when it's dry and then swell back up when it's rainy season or it gets wet. So all that is some type of wall movement, wall rotation. There's various repairs you can do on that.

Carbon strapping plates, a turnbuckle that they actually go out in the yard and install something in a. In a rod that pulls it back. But I'm not here to tell you how to fix your wall. Just some signs that you have a problem.

And you probably already know that number six diagonal cracks at the corners of windows and doors. We've touched on this a little bit already.

Another sign of possible problems with your foundation are diagonal cracks that run from the corners of the windows and doors up toward the ceiling. Of course, as I mentioned before, if it's tiny, probably nothing to worry about. Might just be a new home that settled a bit.

And on a side note there, new home construction are the most likely to have cracks within the first seven years. It depends on the builder and how they compacted the soil, how much they took out.

But if soil is disturbed, in other words, you don't have that virgin soil anymore. It takes up to seven years to regain its original form. So if you don't have.

If you have disturbed soil, you're putting a foundation on that, it's going to settle a little bit. And I. The first house we ever had was a new build.

And within the first year, we had a large crack in the ceiling that made us wonder what was going on. But the builder came, assured us of everything, fixed the crack, never had another problem with it.

So not terribly uncommon on newer homes, especially with expansion. Expansive ceilings, like cathedral ceilings or something like that. So something to look at in your home, diagonal cracks. There may be.

It may be there because you have a new home that's settling a bit or because you've left the house vacant for Some time. And without climate control, no climate control in the summer, humidity, that affects things.

So look at the crack and, and just determine, is it good? Bigger, Is it offset? Is it a quarter inch or more? Number seven, cracked or out of place molding. So trim is what finishes off a house.

Whether it's baseboard, door casing, crown molding, wherever you want it, however you have it, it's a good indicator if something's going on or not. So look for any signs of a problem.

If you have crown molding, especially since that's up high, it's going to tend to reflect, reflect what's going on a little bit more than baseboard molding would or anything like that. So definitely a sign. Now, there's one kind of crack you may notice that doesn't indicate necessarily foundation movement.

If you have a center wall in your house especially, and you'll see where the wall and the ceiling meet and maybe you see some cracking and maybe it's only seasonal. Right. In other words, it looks worse different times of year. Well, that's called truss uplift, to be specific.

If you see cracking that's bigger in extended cold periods of time, your trusses, if they're not covered with insulation, especially on the bottom cord, will shrink naturally because things shrink when they get really cold and don't have moisture. And that's going to lift, especially if it's connected to your ceiling board.

It's going to lift that up a little bit and it's going to be most noticeable in the center of the home because that's the middle of the span. Right. And so if you see that, typically in the summer, it'll come back down.

And so what some folks will do will put if that, that's not really a structural problem. That's just kind of what you have with this house with how it was constructed.

So one way to combat that is installed crown molding to the ceiling and not connect it to the wall.

And so as the ceiling lifts up in the winter a little bit, your crown molding will float with that and it'll cover up any cracks that you may see, but not really something to worry about. And if you have a question on that, certainly give us a call. We can help you with that. Number eight stair step cracks.

And this is interior and exterior. And this would primarily be on either brick or, or concrete block walls, cinder block walls, if you will.

When a foundation sinks, it can often cause cracks and bricks or other type of masonry. These cracks run through both bricks and mortar or just on the mortar Joint, usually a stair step crack itself just goes through the mortar joints.

You can see a stair stepping up.

Almost always these are found in the corners and very frequently this is caused by settlement, simply because you have a downspout that dumps in this corner. We talked earlier about wall rotation and how water can help settle walls. Same thing here.

It has compressed, the soil is saturated because you're not getting water away from the foundation. And so you're going to have settlement leading to diagonal, or excuse me, not diagonal cracking, but stair step cracking.

That indicates you got something moving. Generally a stair step crack is the least significant crack, especially if it's just hairline.

It happens, you get a little sediment, patch it up and monitor for further movement. Number nine and I touched on this earlier with the truss uplift explanation. But number nine is where walls no longer meet the ceiling or the floor.

If this happens, you got something going on, especially if it's more than just down the center aisle. If your foundation moves, this causes gaps to appear between the wall and the ceiling, or between the wall and the floor, or both.

I think the most common area I would see this is, and I'm not picking on lake houses, but you go into a lake house and especially maybe a two story lake house on a crawl space and you see up, you see, you know, all along the perimeter of the walls upstairs, especially because it's reflected more, the higher you go is cracking. There might be a quarter a half inch gap between the ceiling and the, and the wall. Well, that's a significant settlement going on.

Go down into the crawl space and what do you see? We see a main beam and we see support posts that are driving into the beam. In other words, they have that plate on top that supports the beam.

But over time, if this, if they aren't sighted sized properly or if there's so much moisture down there, the wood has become a little bit, you know, soft. It drives the top plates up into it, allowing the whole house to essentially sink. And that's causing that problem up there.

So all these things are signs that you have a problem. Are they fixable? Sure, they're fixable. Depends on how much it is, depending on how big the problem is and how easy it is to fix.

Fix number 10 porches or chimneys that have separated from the house.

If you have a chimney and it's an outside chimney, in other words, it's not going up through the center of your house, it's on one of the outside walls. Go out and take a look at that thing. Look at where it meets the house and how it attaches. Do you have gaps between the chimney and the house?

If the top of your chimney, if the gap between there gets progressively big as it goes up, the footer underneath your chimney is failing and your chimney is pulling away from the wall. Not a good sign that needs to be addressed. Same thing with porches. Porches can settle for a variety of reasons.

And the surface of your porch can settle just because the backfill underneath it wasn't settled properly or compacted before they poured the concrete on it. But that's more of a slab issue and not necessarily a footer. The whole porch is pulling away like you sometimes see on older houses.

Then again, we got some kind of footing at the very base that's settled, damaged, broken, whatever that needs to be fixed. Number 11. And this is a little bit different. But the final point in any kind of foundation issue is water intrusion in the basement.

Water intrusion through basement walls is just another sign you might have a problem and generally can be fixed with some kind of polyurethane grout injection to seal cracks and create a waterproof membrane. You'll see this in basements. Sometimes you'll see in a brand new construction, again, things settle right. Concrete moves, concrete cracks.

If you have a crack in a basement wall, usually they're going to go from floor to ceiling and they may get progressively big as it goes up. That is a potential place for water intrusion. That means your foundation wall has moved. Is it the end of the world? No. Does it need repair? Yes.

Especially if you have water coming in. I've seen homes and basements where they have a dozen of those cracks from floor to ceiling that have been fixed professionally.

You'll see it's a really hard, like epoxy type. They inject into it with tubes and then cut the tube, tube off and leave it in there. And that's what you're looking for.

Generally those are very good repairs. They are usually warranted for at least 20 years, if not lifetime. In some cases they're.

They're projected or guaranteed to be harder than the concrete. And so they are good repairs.

But if you do have a crack like that, especially if you have a finished wall, now you got water coming in and now you can get moisture behind the wall, can't dry out. Then you get mold. And we fixed many of those situations with mold remediation and it's definitely a sign you got a foundation problem.

So lots to throw at you today, many signs that a foundation can be moving, moving. It's not always the end of the world. Well, it's never the end of the world, but it doesn't always indicate you have serious problems.

Look, a house is one thing about a house is it moves. It just does. The wind, the rain, the humidity. Just the nature of things. Things move.

You want to have a foundation that's strong enough to withstand the movements out there, the different pressures. But occasionally you have something where it does not withstand that you need to get it fixed. If you have any questions on that, give us a call.

We're not foundation experts. We can find signs of problems, but we can refer you to somebody that can fix it.

We'd love to do that and help you out and give you that peace of mind knowing your house is good house. It just has some things that need fixed now and then.

So until next time, share this episode with anyone that might be having a foundation issue or just needs this knowledge. In general, we appreciate you watching and listening and talk to you later. Thank you for listening.

This week you can catch up on the left latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. For more information about Gold Key Inspection Services, go to goldkeyinspect. Com.