Help! New Home-Owner Needs Advice

The Issue: 1950s home, purchased about 6 months ago. Foundation (pier and beam) problems are starting to manifest, IE cracks in the walls, around doorways. It wasn’t mentioned in the seller’s disclosure. In fact, a deliberate attempt to cover up this previously existing damage is now clear: everywhere a crack pops out, there is a thick glop of plaster right on top of it. It’s obvious, in hindsight, but that’s why you hire professionals to check this stuff out (see below).

The relocation service (that we purchased the home from) had a structural evaluation performed, by an architectural engineer, before they decided to handle this property. They should have caught this. Also, our own home inspector made no mention whatsoever of this in his report. This is either negligent or fraudulent, I’m not sure which.

So, the mortgage company, going by these fraudulent/negligent reports, approved a loan and sold the home to us. Now, the foundation needs to be repaired (6 months later). I’m certain of one thing: this house is fifty years old, and this damage did not occur within the last six months. But, with so many parties involved, each presumably insured against such occurrences, how does one pursue such a matter?

How do you know the foundation is damaged? The walls and floors could just be under-framed by today's standards causing a little bounce or flex when you walk, and making the cracks. Common procedure when painting is to spackle cracks. They spackled them, slapped some paint on them, and now they are opening up again as you move around in the house.

Are you sure the foundation is the problem?

Cracking in older houses is a fact of nature. It can be especially aggravated in climates where the humidity changes rapidly and frequently, especially if the home does not breathe well (i.e., is very well insulated, but not very well vapor-barriered - and a house built in the 50's is almost certainly not vapor-barriered properly, if at all).

Recent drought conditions can also cause these problems, especially if occasional large rainfall amounts occur. However, a pier and beam foundation isn't a concrete vault type basement, and so you'd probably need some geological information about your area...are the piers on bedrock, for example? What is the soil composition?

we expect our houses to develop a main crack line which will be repaired after one year but little cracks will show up every year due to seasonal changes.

Two thoughts:

Find an independent contractor whom you trust (maybe easier said than done, especially if you're new in town) to look at it and pay them for their trouble out of your own pocket. They will either a) verify that this is actually not a serious problem with the foundation and put your mind at ease or b) give you ammunition to go out against all the "experts" who missed it.

Is this in a cookie-cutter style housing development? If so it seems extremely likely that any basic structural problem in one house has also appeared in at least some of the other houses. Ask around the neighborhood.

I feel for you... we've been in this house for about 13 years, and the roof was estimated to be about 10 years old when we bought it. So the fact that we needed a new roof was not exactly a surprise. What was a surprise was that the back porch roof had started to separate from the house and needed some repairs before it could be re-roofed. (It had been hard to notice due to a tree growing up next to the house, which we had removed before starting the roofing work.) It was probably due to settling of the porch. As you said, this probably didn't happen in the last six months. As if there were any doubt, the roofer found newspapers from 1970 stuffed in between the porch roof and the house!!

The people you mentioned are probably insured for structural or mechanical systems defects. They will probably not honor a cosmetic claim so you would have to prove the foundation in indeed faulty and not normal movement.

I would define faulty as part of it moving and going to continue to move, in one direction, until the support or framing fails. It doesn't have to settle much to cause stress cracks at corners and joints. You may find, like I did, some of the cracks open and close seasonally.

That said, if part of the foundation is going south and continues to do so, you have a claim. In that case you might well let your homeowners insurance company lawyers go after them, if you can. :(

The first foundation repair company we had come out to give us an estimate said that 2 of our 5 main beams were cracked and there was some rotten subfloor. Obviously the foundation repair company has a profit to be made here; but after all, we called them.

When we bought the home, our inspector noted some minor foundation repairs had been done at some point in the past, but that a 50-year-old home should be pretty much settled in place. No cracking beams. No rotten wood. Just a typical 50-year-old home.

Well, the problems that have become obvious (actually re-surfaced) in just six short months appear to be more than "seasonal" or "cosmetic" in nature. At this point, I will definitely be gathering more independent opinions, as well as photographic evidence.

The fact that the beams are cracked may be a huge problem, or it may be of no consequence whatsoever. Wood is a natural material, and it cracks and checks as it dries. Minor cracks are just fine. Major cracks are a huge deal. But after 50 years, I suspect any problems would have played out by now. I assume the cracks are old, and when you examine them closely, you will see that they are the same color as the surrounding exposed wood. If they are fresh, they will be brighter in color. Are the beams sagging or deflected? If not, I bet they are fine.

I notice you haven't mentioned anything about the piers. Are they sound? Have they settled at all?

A sub floor with rot in it may be a big deal, or may not. How much rot? A few square inches by an old leaking toilet that was fixed decades ago? Or a leaky roof that is still actively leaking and rotting out large sections?

Have you crawled under there and looked at it? Or are you relying on just the foundation company?

It's easy to get overwhelmed by something like this and throw a lot of money and effort at it, but there may be nothing wrong here other than some cosmetic cracks and a repair company trying to make some serious money.

Once you get some specific information, like the width of the cracks, and the dimension and span of the beams, you can go to Taunton's Fine Homebuilding website onto the Breaktime forum there. Pose your questions with as much detail as you can, and you will get good information.

Hey, thanks, glatt, man. And thanks everybody, for all the information. We'll see how this plays out. Goodnight.