December 18, 2024 • 41 mins
Unlock the mysteries of foundation repair with RK Bob Brown, the mastermind behind "Foundation Repair Secrets." Bob takes us on a journey through his transformative career from architecture and finance student at Arizona State University to the founder of a successful concrete and foundation repair company. Discover why understanding foundation repair is crucial for homeowners and real estate professionals alike, and learn how to avoid falling prey to industry misconceptions. Bob emphasizes the pivotal role of soil in foundation movement and the importance of consulting a forensic geotechnical engineer for accurate assessments.
Our conversation doesn't stop at identifying problems; we explore the accountability of contractors and the indispensable role of engineers in home repair projects. Bob sheds light on the complexities of state contractor boards and how only engineers can provide the seal of approval necessary for trustworthy work. We tackle structural issues, such as horizontal cracks, and debate the pros and cons of metal beams versus carbon fiber strips. Bob also clears up the myths surrounding the permitting process, highlighting the need for proper diagnosis and verification beyond city or county permits.
The episode wraps up with a comprehensive look at regional soil conditions and their impact on foundation stability. From the challenging clay soils of Texas to the frost depths influencing construction in northern states, Bob shares invaluable insights and tips for maintaining soil health across the U.S. His passion for distributing engineer-backed knowledge shines through as he encourages listeners to share these insights, leave feedback, and stay connected for more expert content. Join us as we celebrate knowledge-sharing and empower you with the tools to ensure the safety and stability of your home.
To learn more about Bob and his soil secrets check his website and social media:
https://foundationrepairsecrets.com/
https://www.instagram.com/rkbobbrown/
Sarah Thress
614-893-5885
First Time Home Buyer course: https://sarahthress.graphy.com/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sarah_thress_realtor/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SarahThressRealtor/
https://www.youtube.com/@LIFEINCOLUMBUS
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi and welcome to this week's episode of Come to
Find Out.
This week we have RK Bob Brown,who is the author of Foundation
Repair Secrets, and I'm soexcited because, you know, bob's
publicist reached out and wasso excited about, you know,
getting him on this show andwhenever he explained to me all
(00:24):
the things that Bob isspecialized in, I thought this
would be such an amazing topicfor everyone out there to hear.
So, bob, thank you so much fortaking time out of your day to
meet with us.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thank you, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Yeah, excellent.
So foundation repair secrets,like how did you, how'd you kind
of come up with that, how didyou, you know, go down this path
, like have you always been insome sort of like engineering
role, or you know, just kind ofwalk us through how you became
the expert.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, so I guess we could start from the very
beginning.
I graduated from Arizona StateUniversity in 1984, which is
like when dinosaurs were aroundand I graduated in architecture
and finance, and then, a littlebit later in my career, I
started a concrete repaircompany that ended up morphing
(01:21):
into a foundation repair company, and along the way, I built a
forensic engineering company andI sold all of them about two
years ago, and so I'm sort ofretired, but not really and my
main goal in life is to helphomeowners and real estate
professionals navigate theconfusing world of foundation
(01:44):
repair, because there's a lot ofmyths, there's a lot of smoke
and mirrors and there's a lot ofinformation that people need to
know to protect themselves, andthe truth of it is there is a
lot of people being takenadvantage of, so I want to help
people protect themselves frombeing taken advantage of.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yeah, I love that because you are correct.
There are so many people outthere that want to take
advantage of people and theymake it seem like the sky is
falling and that the house isabout to crumble to the ground
and it's like, well, no, it'snot that serious.
Yes, you need to look at it anddo some sort of remedy, but the
(02:24):
house is not going to crumble.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
In 35 years I've only seen two houses that were
structurally deficient, and inone of those houses we had a
meeting with like 15 engineersfor like four hours and nobody
was afraid the house was goingto fall down on them.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Wow, wow, yeah, well, that's interesting.
And I have, you know, anytimeI'm working with a buyer, you
know, especially as in firsttime home buyers, but anytime
I'm working with any buyer orseller for that matter.
But you know, whenever we'rewalking through the house, you
know, I'm always kind of justlooking around at the foundation
(03:05):
to see if there's anything thatkind of stands out that you
know I want to point out to them.
But I always, always tell themthat they need to get an
inspector and then if theinspector, you know, recommends
a structural engineer, you know,obviously we do that because I
know I am not the expert, right?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
right, yeah, and let's just talk about engineers
for a second.
Yeah, structural engineerreally isn't the right guy to
call, believe it or not.
Wow, the right guy to call is ageotechnical engineer.
And the reason is is because ifwe're talking about foundation
movement, it's always going tobe from the soil.
The soil is going to be whatcauses the foundation to move.
(03:47):
I had a big friend a greatfriend worked in a road building
business and he said you know,he said all roads are dirt roads
.
He says it doesn't matterwhether you paint them with
concrete or you paint them withasphalt.
The road is actually made ofdirt.
And it's the same for a house.
The dirt under it is going todetermine the performance of the
(04:10):
foundation.
And so a lot of times, if youcall a structural engineer,
he'll come and write a letterand say, yeah, the house is not
structurally efficient.
And then if you say, well,could it get to be bad?
Oh, yeah, maybe it couldcontinue to get worse.
Well, is it going to continueto get worse?
(04:30):
Is the soil going to continueto move?
Well, I can't really tell youthat because I'm not a
geotechnical engineer.
You got to call a geotechnicalengineer and so that's really
the guys that you should just goto right away, cut to the chase
.
And you need to find a forensicgeotech engineer, not just a
regular geotech, because mostengineers work in new
(04:52):
construction, where they builddams and freeways and mines and
buildings, and you need to findsomebody that's a forensic guy,
the guy that comes into existingstructures and determines what
the problem is, and it can't bejust one of these things where
it's like, well, yeah, we doforensics, you know, once in a
(05:15):
while, no, that doesn't count.
I mean, you really need to getsomebody who does forensics
regularly, almost daily, andthen you'll get a good expert
and you'll find them daily.
And then you'll get a goodexpert and you'll find them.
And if you go to my directory,foundationrepairsecretscom, I
have a directory on there offorensic engineers.
Now, they're not all geotechsI'm still trying to find more
(05:36):
but I found at least forensicengineers that will work on
residential structures, andthose are the things that I
usually try to help people with,because you really want to, you
really want to, uh, get to thebottom of it now.
Let's suppose.
Let's suppose you're a, aseller and you want to sell your
house, okay, and you're alittle worried because you know,
(05:56):
hey, there's a few cracks, andyou know the last thing you want
to do is get into an escrow andthen have the inspector go.
Oh, oh, yeah, there's problemshere and you know we need to
reach out to an expert.
Now guess what happens.
Who does everybody call whenthat happens?
They almost always call afoundation repair company.
And the foundation repaircompany.
(06:17):
What are they going to do?
They're going to send out acommissioned salesperson who
makes somewhere between onehundred and three hundred
thousand dollars a year, and ifhe's not making one100,000, they
kick him to the curb and hemakes his money based on sales.
So what is he going to tell you?
Yeah, you're going to need$40,000 in peers.
Well, in the middle of anescrow, nobody's planned on that
(06:39):
.
The whole thing falls apart,right, everybody goes their
separate ways and now you've gotto start all over again as a
seller.
So a better path is to get arelationship.
You know, find, hopefully, yourrealtor is has a relationship
with a good forensic engineer.
Call him up and bring him outbefore you list the house and
(07:04):
he'll do one of two things.
He'll either say number oneit's good, you got no problem.
And send you a letter, put aseal on it.
Now, when the home inspectorbrings it up, you can just give
him this letter and say we'regood, you know, you can give it
to the, to the buyer as well,right?
Uh, that's now.
(07:24):
That's one one scenario.
Now if, if he says, well, youreally should do some repairs
now, chances are 90 percent ofthe time it's going to be fix
the drainage or something verysimple Right, in which case you
can do that and and and.
It's easy to do, and it's easyto do.
Maybe 10% of the time, maybe20% of the time, depending on
(07:46):
your area.
You might have to actually dosome underpinning some piers.
Well, now let's talk about howyou navigate that as a homeowner
.
You call three foundationrepair companies.
One guy says, oh, you need 12piers on this side of the house.
The other guy says, oh, no, youneed peers on this side of the
house.
(08:06):
The other guy says, oh, no, youneed 13 on this side of the
house.
And the third guy says, no, youneed 25 all the way around.
A homeowner is supposed tonavigate that and know who's
right.
How does that work?
No, it doesn't work.
It's not good.
The homeowner usually goes withthe one that they feel most
comfortable with, which isprobably the best sales guy,
(08:30):
which is probably the leastqualified to act as an engineer.
And, by the way, these guys arepracticing engineering without
a license, which they reallyshouldn't be doing, but somehow
the loopholes and the laws allowpeople to get away with it.
But but the fact of the matteris you're better off calling a
forensic engineer and let himdesign the plan and he says, ok,
(08:52):
go on and get three bids for 14peers in this area here and
here's a drawing.
And you start here and you stophere.
You space them this way.
Now you can go get apples toapples bids and you'll probably
pay for the engineering fees.
You'll probably save moneyoverall, because the contractors
(09:13):
know, hey, I got to sharpen mypencil here.
You know I'm bidding againstsomebody who knows exactly what
it is.
You know I can't really likekind of baffle them with
bullshit.
I have to just like be rightand, and you know, sharpen my
pencil and do a good job.
And oh, by the way, there's anengineer that's going to look it
over.
I better make sure it's right,you know.
Uh, I'm not going to try tofudge something in and try to
(09:35):
hornswoggle and tell him no, youneed 25 years.
No, you're going to have to gorun that by the engineer you
know, and convince him uh,they're going to think twice
about doing that.
And and then, and then, guesswhat you get halfway through the
job.
Now what?
Well, there's a thing called achange order.
Are you familiar with thechange order?
No, what is that?
A change order?
(09:56):
You're going to love this part.
The change order is when thecontractor comes to you when the
job's already started andthey're underneath working and
they've got the whole place alltore up, and he says oh, yeah,
uh, we're gonna need to add fivemore peers, you're gonna need
another ten thousand dollars.
Well, as a homeowner, it's likeuh, yeah, I guess, go ahead, or
(10:20):
.
Or if the homeowner decides topush back a little and go no, I
don't think I want to do that,you know then then the
contractor says well, then wecan't warranty the job.
Oh, can't do that.
Okay, put in, the put in.
You know, I'll pay the $10,000.
Well, guess what If you have anengineer who's overseeing the
job and he's the specialinspector on the job?
(10:41):
Now they got to come to him andsay we need to add five more
peers and he's going to say OK,I'm the one that will not look
at this thing.
You're going to have to explainto me why we need five more
peers.
You might be right, but youbetter, you know, better make
sense, you know, because I'm notputting up with any BS here,
you know, and the contractor isgoing to think twice about doing
(11:06):
that Because they know that theengineer has far more knowledge
than they do, right?
Yeah, while we're on, I talkedabout special inspectors.
So city inspectors, they'reworthless for this kind of stuff
.
I mean, they would come out tothe job and go, oh, this is
really cool.
Can you send me someinformation about it?
Right?
Oh, thanks for that inspection,you know.
(11:29):
So what most cities do is theyuse, they sub it out to, like a
special inspector, a specialistwho has knowledge in that area.
Well, the problem is that thecities are lazy, they don't know
people, they don't trust people.
So they tell the contractor youget a special inspector.
(11:49):
And you know.
Well, now the special inspectoris working for the contractor.
That's not good, you know.
No, that's the fox guarding thehen house.
That's not good.
What you want is the guy whodesigned the plan to be the
special inspector and for him tobe in control of the contractor
, not the other way around.
And then at the end of the jobhe'll stamp that and say it was
(12:12):
done for my recommendations.
Now you can bring that to theseller and say, yep, we had a
problem.
But the engineer says thateverything was taken care of and
it's good to go Now.
Is that better than a lifetimewarranty?
Now all these contractors givea lifetime warranty.
(12:33):
What is a lifetime warranty?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, I wondered about that, because does that
mean like the life of the house,the life of being in the house.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
It's very vague.
Yeah, to different contractorsit means different things, and
it's this you know it could belife of the structure.
Well, crap, the structure couldalready be near the end of his
life anyway.
That doesn't really help you.
That's kind of dumb, right?
No?
And those lifetime warrantiesare not worth the paper they're
(13:04):
written on.
Let me explain to you a scenariothat happens.
So you get a homeowner that haswork done, maybe five years ago
, okay, and all of a sudden hestarts to see more cracks.
Well, he calls the contractorup on the phone and says hey,
get over here, you know, honoryour lifetime warranty.
(13:24):
So what does it do?
The contractor sends out theirreally experienced guy and says
he says to the homeowner oh yeah, well, you know, these cracks,
they're not from settlement,they're from upheaval.
You know they're from claysthat are expanding and heaving
up.
And it says right here in ourcontract that our peers can't
(13:45):
stop that and we don't guaranteefor it.
And you know, have a nice life.
Wow, if the homeowner is smart,he might say well, wait, wait,
wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
If it's heaving, then youprobably diagnosed it wrong in
the first place.
If it's heating, then youprobably diagnosed it wrong in
the first place.
And then the contractor sayswhat do we know?
(14:05):
We're not engineers, we're justdumb contractors.
You know, wow, and of coursethat's not what they tell you at
the very beginning.
The salesman comes in there I'msmarter than an engineer, I'm
better.
I've been doing this for allthese many years.
Of course, that's all verbalstuff that can't be verified,
right, right, five years laterthen they're telling you a
(14:28):
different story oh, we're notengineers, we're just dumb
contractors.
You know, you can't hold usresponsible for designs.
Who holds contractorsresponsible for their designs?
Well, the state contractorsboards only regulate workmanship
, they don't regulate designs.
And the state boards thatoversee engineers for designs
(14:48):
have no jurisdiction overcontractors.
So the designs of contractorsgo completely unregulated.
There's nobody that overseesthem.
You can't, you can't, oh, you,I guess you could sue them.
Good luck on that.
I mean, their contracts arelike 10 pages long and they're
filled with all kinds of get outjail free scenarios for them,
(15:11):
right, and they got a lot ofmoney and you're going to be
fighting for four or five yearsand spending three or four
hundred thousand dollars inattorney's fees.
You know, not a great plan,right?
Um, so the the?
I tell people right away alifetime warranty has got so
(15:33):
many get out of jail free cardsin their contract.
It's worthless, it doesn't meananything.
What does mean something is anengineer seal that it was done
properly.
Per my inspection and per my,per my intent, that means
something because guess what?
The engineer, he he is overseenby the Board of Technical
(15:53):
Registration for his state andhe can be turned in for
unethical behavior for lots ofthings working outside of his
area of expertise, not designingthings right.
You can hold engineersaccountable and, trust me, they
know that and they're going toget it right.
That's their job and that meanssomething that is worth the
(16:18):
money that you pay for it.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, is worth, you know the money that you pay for
it.
Yeah, now, you've mentioned afew different times about like
the, the pillars, or you know,like different things that you
would see if you see astructural deficiency.
You know like there's ahorizontal crack and maybe the
foundation is coming in and youknow you need to keep it from
moving and straighten it backout.
(16:41):
And I've seen some.
You know some people will say,oh, every four feet you need to
have that metal beam.
Others love the strips, thecarbon fiber strips.
What in your you know, in youropinion, what do you think is
better the pillars, like themetal posts or the carbon fiber?
(17:04):
And I guess, what would yourecommend?
If someone was coming to youand asking that question, what
would you say?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Sure, well, first of all, it depends what the problem
is, because most of theproblems in this industry are
from improper diagnosis.
The pillars, the posts thatyou're talking about, the piers,
the helical pier, push pierthey're very common in the
industry.
You drive them down tillrefusal, till they get into hard
rock, and then you can use thatto lift and stabilize the house
(17:31):
.
Those are very good productsand most contractors install
them competently and do a goodjob with it.
So that's not the problem.
The problem is how do youdiagnose it?
You know, does it really needit?
You know, uh, you know.
And, uh, you can put in peersand you would typically put
those either six to eight feeton center, and that depends on,
(17:53):
uh, that depends on the weightof the house and the strength of
the beam between the peers andseveral other factors.
Now, the carbon fiber strips,uh, would not be solved, would
not be used to solve for a housethat's sinking.
They would be used for, like abasement wall that's buckling in
, or maybe some cracks in theconcrete that you want to keep
(18:16):
together, that you don't wantthem to spread, and that kind of
stuff.
Different application, okay,but let's talk about permits for
a minute.
Yeah, uh, salespeople tellhomeowners and realtors all the
time oh, don't worry, you knowthere's no engineer on the front
end, but when we get permits,the engineer is going to look
over everything because he hasto submit a plan that has to be
(18:40):
approved by the city or countyand that engineer is going to
look over everything and makesure it's okay.
That is absolutely 100, nottrue.
That is not true.
Yeah, and I'll tell you why.
Because, uh, engineers can getin trouble if they rely on
somebody that's not, that doesnot work for them, an employee.
(19:02):
If they rely on somebody elsefrom another company to give
them data and they use that datato make recommendations and
those recommendations are wrong,that engineer can be held
liable for that and he could besanctioned by the board.
So so engineers will not ifthey don't gather the data in
the first place, they will not.
(19:22):
They will not opine or commentor anything else about it.
And now let's talk about whenyou get the permit, because you
got to put your engineer seal onthere, right?
What does that mean?
Well, that means that.
Well, first of all, what?
What does the city require?
The city?
The only requirement to puttingin these piers?
(19:42):
The city wants to see is aspacing calculation of, as you
mentioned, how far apart are thepiers.
Are they four feet, are theysix feet, are they eight feet?
The city doesn't want it to betoo far apart so that it droops
between the piers, and so that'sthe only thing that they check
for.
That's the only thing.
So check for that's the onlything.
So you could have the peers onthe wrong side of the house, you
(20:06):
could have too many, you couldhave too little, you might not
even need peers at all, and thepermit process does not correct
for any of those problems.
The only thing they're going tocheck for is are they spaced
right?
That's it is.
Are they spaced right?
That's it.
And for the salesman to say oh,don't worry, the engineer is
(20:30):
going to check everything.
No, the engineer is not goingto check that the peers are on
the right side of the house.
They're not going to check thatthey're too many or too little
or that they're even needed atall.
They're not going to do that.
All they're going to do is aspacing calculation and that's
it.
So don't buy that businessabout.
Oh, don't worry, the engineeris going to check it over, not
true?
Yeah, the only way to get theengineer to check it over is to
(20:50):
make sure he's the first one onthe job and he diagnoses the
problem and he develops thesolution for that diagnosis.
Then you know you're, then youknow you're golden for that
diagnosis, then you know you'regolden.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
I love that.
So do you recommend that everyperson buying a house get one of
these specialized engineersinvolved every time before they
make an offer or during theoffer period?
Or, you know, is theresomething that you know would
make you like if someone waslooking at a house, something
that would trigger them intothinking that, you know, maybe
(21:27):
they should get someone likethat involved?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Right, good question.
So the question is, first ofall, what should I be looking
for?
Because really, I mean, youdon't want to have an engineer
come out every time.
You might never have a problemin your whole life of a house.
That'd be a waste of money.
What you want to do is, if youhave Society of Home Inspectors,
how to recognize these things.
(22:04):
So, very simple, cracks.
Cracks in walls is probably theeasiest thing to see.
If you have cracks in yourwalls and you have more than one
crack, people come to me allthe time and say, hey, I have a
crack.
I'm like a crack, you, you know, unless it's a really big crack
, I'm not gonna be too worriedby a crack, you know.
(22:26):
Uh, usually I'm looking for apattern of cracks, a pattern of
distress, and this is more thancracks.
But let's talk about cracks onthe inside are probably the most
easiest to see.
Cracks on the outside, they'rea little more difficult.
If you have brick and block,then that's pretty easy.
You have snuggle over frame.
It's going to be pretty hard tosee.
(22:47):
You have siding.
It's not going to show up onthe outside at all.
Okay, so cracks, doors out ofsquare, like if you're looking
at a door and it's like an inchhigh on one side and on the
other side it's pinched.
Yeah, that's a door that's outof square.
Okay, at windows, same thingvertically.
(23:07):
You go to close it and the topis, you know, wide, the bottom
is skinny, or vice versa.
That window's out of square.
Uh, cracks in your floor.
Now, the cracks in the almost.
I can guarantee you almostevery floor has cracks in it.
But if those cracks in thefloor are in an area that
(23:30):
there's cracks in the wall, ok,now you have a pattern right.
If you have slopes in yourfloors, like if you got a high
spot and you can noticeably seeit's dropping down, you know, in
an area, by itself maybe Iwouldn't get too worried about
it.
But if there's damage that goesalong with it, now you got a
pattern right.
(23:50):
That's what I want to look foris pattern.
If you see any of thosepatterns, yeah then, and you're
getting ready to sell.
I would call a forensic,geotechnical engineer to have
him come out and say, okay,here's the deal, and he might
say it's no big deal.
Or he might say, well, you know, could be a problem, let's
(24:13):
monitor it.
We'll come back in six monthsand see what the difference is,
and they'll do what they call afloor level survey.
And that's where you take aninstrument called a manometer
and about every five feet oncenter in every room of the
house, you take an elevationreading which tells you how high
or how low it is compared toeverything else in the house.
And then you put that into acomputer program and it plots
(24:35):
out a nice colored 3D visualthat tells you where it's high.
You can see it really easilywhere it's high and where it's
low.
And then if you've got a biglow spot over here and there's a
bunch of damage, well youprobably can say, yeah, it's
probably moved.
But maybe in six months fromnow, if we do it again, it
hasn't moved much.
Okay, well, that means it's notreally doing much.
(24:55):
Patch up the cracks, you know,and be fine, right, uh.
And the engineer will say that.
Or he might say fix thedrainage.
Or you know and be fine, right,and the engineer will say that.
Or he might say fix thedrainage.
Or, you know, is a number ofthings that he might say.
He might say, okay, yeah, aftersix months, yeah, it's
continuing to move.
We better underpin it, you know, stabilize it, you know, level
(25:16):
it a little bit, you know, andthose are the kind of some of
the options that the engineermight bring to the table.
Now, one more thing that wehaven't talked about, yeah, and
that is soil.
Right, this is all about soil.
A lot of people think that soilis just, you know, very simple
one big brown mass underneaththe house, right?
(25:37):
No, it's many, many layersunderneath the house, right?
No, it's.
It's many, many layers, andeach layer is a different
density, a different mineralcontent, different affinity to
water, different reactions towater, and and water travels
between all these layers and itdoes different things to these,
all at different times.
And these layers are notexactly straight, some are
(25:59):
slanted, some disappear.
You know, then, the rocks, and,and it's very, very complicated
, and engineers understand thegeology, uh, geotechnical
engineers understand that the,the geology, how, how those
layers were deposited over manymillions of years, and they do
borings all the time.
They're familiar in an area,kind of the pattern, and, and so
(26:20):
they understand that.
And, uh, then you start tounderstand that one of the types
of clay soils that can be veryproblematic is clay soil.
Okay, clay, uh, is very uniquebecause it's a very, very tiny
particle.
It's so small that in order tolook at an individual particle
(26:41):
you need a scanning tunnelingmicroscope, uh, and it has a
slight negative charge and waterhas a slight positive charge
and they're attracted to eachother and so it pulls the water
over.
My favorite saying is claysucks because it sucks the water
right to it and, and when itdoes that, it it, it distributes
(27:03):
the water particle, it tries todistribute it between each one
of those clay particles.
Well, they're so tiny that itblows up when it does that.
So clay swells when it gets wetand when it dries it shrinks
back down.
Well, that's problematic.
If you have a house, that's ontop of it, okay, and uh, so, uh,
if you have wet seasons and dryseasons, you might go through
(27:26):
cyclical, you know, shrink andswell.
Right, you want to understandthose, those behaviors.
Now, the reason that'simportant is because a lot of
foundation repair, uh, suppliers, the guys that make the peers
that the contractors put in,they train the contractors how
to recognize the problem and howto you know, basically put in
(27:46):
peers right For everything.
Well, if it's heave, if you'vegot a heat, you know if you've
got part of the house that'sheaved up and the other parts
lower.
You know well, they're probablygoing to say, yeah, let's raise
the lower part up.
Well, the lower part didn't godown, it's the other part that
went up.
You shouldn't be trying tolevel it that way.
That doesn't make any sense.
(28:07):
You could do damage to thehouse, and it's not a good idea.
You want to deal with theheaving problem.
You want to deal with the rightproblem.
After all, you could put thepiers in, you might level it out
(28:41):
, and then the heave continues.
Well, then you're going to beright back in that same scenario
that we talked about earlierwhere the contractor says you
know, it's not my fault, youknow you didn't help yourself.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
So a good engineer will understand heave versus
settlement and make sure theyunderstand the problem to give
you the right solution for theright problem.
Yeah, now, have you ever heard?
Because I've seen someinspectors that obviously are
not geoengineers, you know, andthey're not.
They're not the specialiststhat you're talking about, but
sometimes they'll throw outthere like oh, it's just the
grading around the house that'scausing that.
If you just change the grading,like make the soil go away from
(29:06):
the house so that water flowsdown instead of like that, is
that something?
Does that make sense?
Is that a true thing?
Or is that just something thatpeople just kind of say know a
true thing?
Or is that just something thatpeople just kind of say I?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
I say it's good advice.
I mean, every house should haveproper grading, and the code
for for for residential codesays that there needs to be six
inches of drop for 10 feet awayon the house, and if you don't
have that, then you have poordrainage.
Now you might be in soil thathas doesn't make any difference,
you know it's not going to evermove.
Then you have poor drainage.
Now you might be in soil thatdoesn't make any difference.
(29:42):
You know it's not going to evermove and you know whatever.
But if you have problematicsoils, you're going to know it
and the grading is going to beone of the things that is going
to be a problem for you, and soit's a good idea to make sure
that grading and drainage isproperly done.
(30:02):
Now, that's harder than it seemsbecause, like, well, now you
have this sidewalk that runsalong the side of the house and
you know you've got a foot ofplanter between it and the house
.
Well, that traps the water.
You've got planters in front.
What do you do with those?
You have to kind of think itthrough.
It's not as easy as it seems.
It's good advice, though.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Okay, well, no, that's good to know, because I
always mean, I think, when I wasin the forensic engineering
business.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
every report we recommended that the grading and
drainage be improved.
You know we recommend putgutters on the house and have
the downspouts and then have thedownspouts piped 20 feet away.
It doesn't do any good to put agutter on and have it dump
right at the corner of the house.
Now you've got all the thewhole roof concentrated in one
(31:04):
area.
That's that's not a greatscenario.
You want to get it away?
Yeah, we recommended that.
Almost every house we looked at.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah.
So it sounds like, you know, ifwe were going to summarize kind
of like some top tips, you know, if someone was listening to
this and maybe they're, uh, youknow, a seller, um, and they're
thinking about, uh, puttingtheir house on the market, um,
or they've, you know, justpurchased it and they just want
to, you know, be proactiveinstead of reactive, what would
(31:32):
be like some top things, youknow, obviously, like the, the
drainage, making sure thatthat's correct, and and things
like that.
But are there like some topthings that like, if someone
came to you and just said, hey,what can I do to avoid having
any of these issues and havingyou know to go through this
process, what tips would yougive people?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Well, it's a little more complicated than that,
because we were talking ingeneralities about, like, proper
drainage, right?
Yeah, well, part of it, part ofit depends on, well, what's
been the soil conditions for thelast two or 300,000 years.
You know, you know, are you inLouisiana, where it's been wet
for two or 300,000 years, maybeTexas, maybe Florida, right?
(32:13):
Uh well, in that case you don'twant it to dry out.
If it dries out and it's clays,now Florida, there's not a lot
of clays.
But, uh, you don't want it todry out.
If it dries out and it's clays,now in Florida there's not a
lot of clays.
But if there are clays in yoursoil and it dries out, it's
going to shrink, right.
And if you're on the edge andit shrinks, that's going to be
settlement on the edge.
They got a lot of problems withthat in Texas.
(32:34):
So what do they do, texas,louisiana?
What they do is they tellpeople put a soaker around your
perimeter of your house with atimer that turns on every day,
or maybe twice a day, to keepsthat soil nice and wet.
Now, you would be like insaneto do that in Arizona, where I'm
at, you know, it's very, verydry and we get eight inches of
(32:54):
rain a year in a good year, youknow you just don't want to do
that.
So part of it is you have toknow what the recommendations
are for your area, and it doeschange regionally a lot.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Huh, that's really good to know.
So if someone you know wantedto know specifically, they
should go to a geo engineer tobe able to know what their soil
is and what the best plan ofaction is for them.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah, that's a really good question.
I mean, in Texas you can getthat information pretty readily
because Texas is kind of likethe epicenter of foundation
problems.
But in other areas it may notbe quite so easy.
I know there's a lot of reallygood engineers in Kansas, uh,
and there's some good ones kindof uh, along the mid Atlantic
(33:49):
area, um, but other than thatthere, I mean they're out there,
they're on my directory, but,uh, you know, like Texas, you
could probably Google whatshould I do for my soils, and
it'll probably, you know, comeup for Texas, you know, put a
soaker around your house, youknow.
Now again, maybe not in SanAntonio, that's a little drier,
(34:12):
right.
So you know, houston, yeah forsure.
But you know you might be ableto get that information by
Google, googling it, you might.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Yeah, no, that's such good advice though, and I love
that Cause I would have nevereven thought about.
I mean, I grew up in Oklahoma,um, but I live in Ohio now and
you know, obviously, totaldifferent um you know weather
and um, you know in in Oklahomadifferent you know weather and
(34:44):
you know in Oklahoma it's ironicthat there are no basements
because of you know the soil andthe clay and all of the stuff
that's underneath it, so hard.
And then here in Ohio, likeit's rare to have a house, not
have a basement.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
So you know, part of that is just what they call the
freeze frost depth, because youknow, the farther north you go
and the higher the elevationsyou go, you know, the more it
freezes, and so what you have isthe water that's in the soil
(35:13):
below the house.
If it freezes, it actuallyswells also, and so what you
want to do is build the footingsdown below that frost steps.
And so you know, when you're inOhio you might have to go down
three feet, maybe four feet, youknow, and in some places you
know you got to go down eightfeet.
You know, maybe not in Ohio,but some parts of the United
(35:34):
States you got to go down eightfeet.
Well, if you're going to digdown that far, you might as well
just put in a basement whileyou're at it.
Right, I mean, not that muchmore work, and that's part of
what it is.
I typically see a lot ofbasements up North and a lot of
slabs down South.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, exactly.
So obviously this is somethingthat you're you know that you're
passionate about and very, veryknowledgeable about it.
So is that kind of what led youdown the path to writing this
book and, you know, creatingthis directory?
You know, I guess just kind ofwalk me through, like what, what
made you think that you know,hey, I should write this book,
(36:12):
hey, I should create thisdirectory?
You know, was it just that youhad multiple like people that
you know kept giving the wrongadvice and you thought, oh my
gosh, I need to help people?
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah, well, I mean, I'm uniquely qualified to opine
on this subject because I wasone of the few contractors that
had engineers work on the frontend and I had a foundation
repair company and I could see,I mean, I didn't start out with
engineers, I started out withjust a foundation repair company
(36:43):
and I knew a lot of engineersand pretty soon I you know, I,
when I first got in, I didn'tknow anything and I, my supplier
, taught me everything, likethey do with every contractor.
But then I started.
You know, I had a lot of,because of my degree in
architecture, I had a lot ofengineering friends and forensic
engineering friends.
And pretty soon I startedtalking to them and I'm thinking
(37:07):
, wait, wait, I think we'redoing this wrong.
I got sales guys that areselling things and they're not
really engineers and they're notreally qualified and they're
getting it wrong most of thetime.
I think we need a bettermousetrap.
And so I eventually hired anengineer and built a forensic
(37:29):
engineering company and I'd goto conferences and I'd see
people in the network and I'dtalk to them.
Contractors, they're all friends, you know.
They're all doing it wrong.
Yeah, I, I tried to help them.
They're just not interested,they're just not.
They just want to make moneyand you know, kind of feel good
(37:56):
that they're helping people,which is fine, but really the
industry is not doing it theright way.
They're more focused on thebottom line and there's some
consolidation, some changinghappening in the industry.
There's private equitycompanies that are going around
(38:17):
and buying up foundation repaircompanies and rolling them up
into big, big companies that aretraded on the New York stock
exchange and it's all about thenumbers you know, and uh.
So it's going to become moredifficult for homeowners because
you're going to be up againstsome, some bigger players that
are more sophisticated and uhare a little more difficult to
(38:42):
push back with.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah, I love that.
I love that.
Well, bob, thank you so muchfor taking time out of your day
coming on here sharing all ofyour vast knowledge.
Um, obviously, I will have allthe links in the show notes.
Um, you know, are you on socialmedia or do you have a website?
Okay, perfect, yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
My website is the same for my book foundation
repair secrets and you can getmy book on my website or you can
get it from Amazon.
Uh, you can uh look me up, uh,as the dirt whisperer uh, on
Facebook and you know Instagramand LinkedIn, and you know, I
think I'm, I think I'm on uh uhX and and uh, uh, I think I'm,
(39:30):
I'm even on Tik TOK, I think Idon't know.
I have a social media team thatdoes all that stuff, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah, I love that.
Yeah, that's amazing, I lovethat.
And so, like we said in thebeginning, it's RK Bob Brown.
Right, if you're looking forstuff, because obviously, if you
Google Bob Brown, a lot ofdifferent things come up.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Right, You'll get some sports jockey in Texas or
something you know, some radiopersonality.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Right, I love it.
I love it.
Yes, well, thank you again,truly appreciate it.
Like I said, I will have allthe links in the show notes.
So definitely, you know, makesure that you know anyone that's
listening.
Please make sure that you sharethis with anyone that you think
could really use thisinformation.
That is the greatest complimentthat you can give Bob and
(40:26):
myself.
Make sure that you're leaving areview, because feedback is a
gift, and make sure that you'refollowing the show so you never
miss an episode and you don'tmiss out on great information
like Bob just shared with us.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Right, and, by the way, if you share with me when
you're going to publish this, mysocial media team will pump it
up for you as well.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Oh, perfect, perfect, yeah, absolutely, I will do
that.
Well, thank you so much and wewill see you next time.
On Come to Find Out.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Very good.
Hi and welcome to this week's episode of Come to
Find Out.
This week we have RK Bob Brown,who is the author of Foundation
Repair Secrets, and I'm soexcited because, you know, bob's
publicist reached out and wasso excited about, you know,
getting him on this show andwhenever he explained to me all
(00:24):
the things that Bob isspecialized in, I thought this
would be such an amazing topicfor everyone out there to hear.
So, bob, thank you so much fortaking time out of your day to
meet with us.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thank you, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Yeah, excellent.
So foundation repair secrets,like how did you, how'd you kind
of come up with that, how didyou, you know, go down this path
, like have you always been insome sort of like engineering
role, or you know, just kind ofwalk us through how you became
the expert.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, so I guess we could start from the very
beginning.
I graduated from Arizona StateUniversity in 1984, which is
like when dinosaurs were aroundand I graduated in architecture
and finance, and then, a littlebit later in my career, I
started a concrete repaircompany that ended up morphing
(01:21):
into a foundation repair company, and along the way, I built a
forensic engineering company andI sold all of them about two
years ago, and so I'm sort ofretired, but not really and my
main goal in life is to helphomeowners and real estate
professionals navigate theconfusing world of foundation
(01:44):
repair, because there's a lot ofmyths, there's a lot of smoke
and mirrors and there's a lot ofinformation that people need to
know to protect themselves, andthe truth of it is there is a
lot of people being takenadvantage of, so I want to help
people protect themselves frombeing taken advantage of.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yeah, I love that because you are correct.
There are so many people outthere that want to take
advantage of people and theymake it seem like the sky is
falling and that the house isabout to crumble to the ground
and it's like, well, no, it'snot that serious.
Yes, you need to look at it anddo some sort of remedy, but the
(02:24):
house is not going to crumble.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
In 35 years I've only seen two houses that were
structurally deficient, and inone of those houses we had a
meeting with like 15 engineersfor like four hours and nobody
was afraid the house was goingto fall down on them.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Wow, wow, yeah, well, that's interesting.
And I have, you know, anytimeI'm working with a buyer, you
know, especially as in firsttime home buyers, but anytime
I'm working with any buyer orseller for that matter.
But you know, whenever we'rewalking through the house, you
know, I'm always kind of justlooking around at the foundation
(03:05):
to see if there's anything thatkind of stands out that you
know I want to point out to them.
But I always, always tell themthat they need to get an
inspector and then if theinspector, you know, recommends
a structural engineer, you know,obviously we do that because I
know I am not the expert, right?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
right, yeah, and let's just talk about engineers
for a second.
Yeah, structural engineerreally isn't the right guy to
call, believe it or not.
Wow, the right guy to call is ageotechnical engineer.
And the reason is is because ifwe're talking about foundation
movement, it's always going tobe from the soil.
The soil is going to be whatcauses the foundation to move.
(03:47):
I had a big friend a greatfriend worked in a road building
business and he said you know,he said all roads are dirt roads
.
He says it doesn't matterwhether you paint them with
concrete or you paint them withasphalt.
The road is actually made ofdirt.
And it's the same for a house.
The dirt under it is going todetermine the performance of the
(04:10):
foundation.
And so a lot of times, if youcall a structural engineer,
he'll come and write a letterand say, yeah, the house is not
structurally efficient.
And then if you say, well,could it get to be bad?
Oh, yeah, maybe it couldcontinue to get worse.
Well, is it going to continueto get worse?
(04:30):
Is the soil going to continueto move?
Well, I can't really tell youthat because I'm not a
geotechnical engineer.
You got to call a geotechnicalengineer and so that's really
the guys that you should just goto right away, cut to the chase
.
And you need to find a forensicgeotech engineer, not just a
regular geotech, because mostengineers work in new
(04:52):
construction, where they builddams and freeways and mines and
buildings, and you need to findsomebody that's a forensic guy,
the guy that comes into existingstructures and determines what
the problem is, and it can't bejust one of these things where
it's like, well, yeah, we doforensics, you know, once in a
(05:15):
while, no, that doesn't count.
I mean, you really need to getsomebody who does forensics
regularly, almost daily, andthen you'll get a good expert
and you'll find them daily.
And then you'll get a goodexpert and you'll find them.
And if you go to my directory,foundationrepairsecretscom, I
have a directory on there offorensic engineers.
Now, they're not all geotechsI'm still trying to find more
(05:36):
but I found at least forensicengineers that will work on
residential structures, andthose are the things that I
usually try to help people with,because you really want to, you
really want to, uh, get to thebottom of it now.
Let's suppose.
Let's suppose you're a, aseller and you want to sell your
house, okay, and you're alittle worried because you know,
(05:56):
hey, there's a few cracks, andyou know the last thing you want
to do is get into an escrow andthen have the inspector go.
Oh, oh, yeah, there's problemshere and you know we need to
reach out to an expert.
Now guess what happens.
Who does everybody call whenthat happens?
They almost always call afoundation repair company.
And the foundation repaircompany.
(06:17):
What are they going to do?
They're going to send out acommissioned salesperson who
makes somewhere between onehundred and three hundred
thousand dollars a year, and ifhe's not making one100,000, they
kick him to the curb and hemakes his money based on sales.
So what is he going to tell you?
Yeah, you're going to need$40,000 in peers.
Well, in the middle of anescrow, nobody's planned on that
(06:39):
.
The whole thing falls apart,right, everybody goes their
separate ways and now you've gotto start all over again as a
seller.
So a better path is to get arelationship.
You know, find, hopefully, yourrealtor is has a relationship
with a good forensic engineer.
Call him up and bring him outbefore you list the house and
(07:04):
he'll do one of two things.
He'll either say number oneit's good, you got no problem.
And send you a letter, put aseal on it.
Now, when the home inspectorbrings it up, you can just give
him this letter and say we'regood, you know, you can give it
to the, to the buyer as well,right?
Uh, that's now.
(07:24):
That's one one scenario.
Now if, if he says, well, youreally should do some repairs
now, chances are 90 percent ofthe time it's going to be fix
the drainage or something verysimple Right, in which case you
can do that and and and.
It's easy to do, and it's easyto do.
Maybe 10% of the time, maybe20% of the time, depending on
(07:46):
your area.
You might have to actually dosome underpinning some piers.
Well, now let's talk about howyou navigate that as a homeowner
.
You call three foundationrepair companies.
One guy says, oh, you need 12piers on this side of the house.
The other guy says, oh, no, youneed peers on this side of the
house.
(08:06):
The other guy says, oh, no, youneed 13 on this side of the
house.
And the third guy says, no, youneed 25 all the way around.
A homeowner is supposed tonavigate that and know who's
right.
How does that work?
No, it doesn't work.
It's not good.
The homeowner usually goes withthe one that they feel most
comfortable with, which isprobably the best sales guy,
(08:30):
which is probably the leastqualified to act as an engineer.
And, by the way, these guys arepracticing engineering without
a license, which they reallyshouldn't be doing, but somehow
the loopholes and the laws allowpeople to get away with it.
But but the fact of the matteris you're better off calling a
forensic engineer and let himdesign the plan and he says, ok,
(08:52):
go on and get three bids for 14peers in this area here and
here's a drawing.
And you start here and you stophere.
You space them this way.
Now you can go get apples toapples bids and you'll probably
pay for the engineering fees.
You'll probably save moneyoverall, because the contractors
(09:13):
know, hey, I got to sharpen mypencil here.
You know I'm bidding againstsomebody who knows exactly what
it is.
You know I can't really likekind of baffle them with
bullshit.
I have to just like be rightand, and you know, sharpen my
pencil and do a good job.
And oh, by the way, there's anengineer that's going to look it
over.
I better make sure it's right,you know.
Uh, I'm not going to try tofudge something in and try to
(09:35):
hornswoggle and tell him no, youneed 25 years.
No, you're going to have to gorun that by the engineer you
know, and convince him uh,they're going to think twice
about doing that.
And and then, and then, guesswhat you get halfway through the
job.
Now what?
Well, there's a thing called achange order.
Are you familiar with thechange order?
No, what is that?
A change order?
(09:56):
You're going to love this part.
The change order is when thecontractor comes to you when the
job's already started andthey're underneath working and
they've got the whole place alltore up, and he says oh, yeah,
uh, we're gonna need to add fivemore peers, you're gonna need
another ten thousand dollars.
Well, as a homeowner, it's likeuh, yeah, I guess, go ahead, or
(10:20):
.
Or if the homeowner decides topush back a little and go no, I
don't think I want to do that,you know then then the
contractor says well, then wecan't warranty the job.
Oh, can't do that.
Okay, put in, the put in.
You know, I'll pay the $10,000.
Well, guess what If you have anengineer who's overseeing the
job and he's the specialinspector on the job?
(10:41):
Now they got to come to him andsay we need to add five more
peers and he's going to say OK,I'm the one that will not look
at this thing.
You're going to have to explainto me why we need five more
peers.
You might be right, but youbetter, you know, better make
sense, you know, because I'm notputting up with any BS here,
you know, and the contractor isgoing to think twice about doing
(11:06):
that Because they know that theengineer has far more knowledge
than they do, right?
Yeah, while we're on, I talkedabout special inspectors.
So city inspectors, they'reworthless for this kind of stuff
.
I mean, they would come out tothe job and go, oh, this is
really cool.
Can you send me someinformation about it?
Right?
Oh, thanks for that inspection,you know.
(11:29):
So what most cities do is theyuse, they sub it out to, like a
special inspector, a specialistwho has knowledge in that area.
Well, the problem is that thecities are lazy, they don't know
people, they don't trust people.
So they tell the contractor youget a special inspector.
(11:49):
And you know.
Well, now the special inspectoris working for the contractor.
That's not good, you know.
No, that's the fox guarding thehen house.
That's not good.
What you want is the guy whodesigned the plan to be the
special inspector and for him tobe in control of the contractor
, not the other way around.
And then at the end of the jobhe'll stamp that and say it was
(12:12):
done for my recommendations.
Now you can bring that to theseller and say, yep, we had a
problem.
But the engineer says thateverything was taken care of and
it's good to go Now.
Is that better than a lifetimewarranty?
Now all these contractors givea lifetime warranty.
(12:33):
What is a lifetime warranty?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, I wondered about that, because does that
mean like the life of the house,the life of being in the house.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
It's very vague.
Yeah, to different contractorsit means different things, and
it's this you know it could belife of the structure.
Well, crap, the structure couldalready be near the end of his
life anyway.
That doesn't really help you.
That's kind of dumb, right?
No?
And those lifetime warrantiesare not worth the paper they're
(13:04):
written on.
Let me explain to you a scenariothat happens.
So you get a homeowner that haswork done, maybe five years ago
, okay, and all of a sudden hestarts to see more cracks.
Well, he calls the contractorup on the phone and says hey,
get over here, you know, honoryour lifetime warranty.
(13:24):
So what does it do?
The contractor sends out theirreally experienced guy and says
he says to the homeowner oh yeah, well, you know, these cracks,
they're not from settlement,they're from upheaval.
You know they're from claysthat are expanding and heaving
up.
And it says right here in ourcontract that our peers can't
(13:45):
stop that and we don't guaranteefor it.
And you know, have a nice life.
Wow, if the homeowner is smart,he might say well, wait, wait,
wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
If it's heaving, then youprobably diagnosed it wrong in
the first place.
If it's heating, then youprobably diagnosed it wrong in
the first place.
And then the contractor sayswhat do we know?
(14:05):
We're not engineers, we're justdumb contractors.
You know, wow, and of coursethat's not what they tell you at
the very beginning.
The salesman comes in there I'msmarter than an engineer, I'm
better.
I've been doing this for allthese many years.
Of course, that's all verbalstuff that can't be verified,
right, right, five years laterthen they're telling you a
(14:28):
different story oh, we're notengineers, we're just dumb
contractors.
You know, you can't hold usresponsible for designs.
Who holds contractorsresponsible for their designs?
Well, the state contractorsboards only regulate workmanship
, they don't regulate designs.
And the state boards thatoversee engineers for designs
(14:48):
have no jurisdiction overcontractors.
So the designs of contractorsgo completely unregulated.
There's nobody that overseesthem.
You can't, you can't, oh, you,I guess you could sue them.
Good luck on that.
I mean, their contracts arelike 10 pages long and they're
filled with all kinds of get outjail free scenarios for them,
(15:11):
right, and they got a lot ofmoney and you're going to be
fighting for four or five yearsand spending three or four
hundred thousand dollars inattorney's fees.
You know, not a great plan,right?
Um, so the the?
I tell people right away alifetime warranty has got so
(15:33):
many get out of jail free cardsin their contract.
It's worthless, it doesn't meananything.
What does mean something is anengineer seal that it was done
properly.
Per my inspection and per my,per my intent, that means
something because guess what?
The engineer, he he is overseenby the Board of Technical
(15:53):
Registration for his state andhe can be turned in for
unethical behavior for lots ofthings working outside of his
area of expertise, not designingthings right.
You can hold engineersaccountable and, trust me, they
know that and they're going toget it right.
That's their job and that meanssomething that is worth the
(16:18):
money that you pay for it.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, is worth, you know the money that you pay for
it.
Yeah, now, you've mentioned afew different times about like
the, the pillars, or you know,like different things that you
would see if you see astructural deficiency.
You know like there's ahorizontal crack and maybe the
foundation is coming in and youknow you need to keep it from
moving and straighten it backout.
(16:41):
And I've seen some.
You know some people will say,oh, every four feet you need to
have that metal beam.
Others love the strips, thecarbon fiber strips.
What in your you know, in youropinion, what do you think is
better the pillars, like themetal posts or the carbon fiber?
(17:04):
And I guess, what would yourecommend?
If someone was coming to youand asking that question, what
would you say?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Sure, well, first of all, it depends what the problem
is, because most of theproblems in this industry are
from improper diagnosis.
The pillars, the posts thatyou're talking about, the piers,
the helical pier, push pierthey're very common in the
industry.
You drive them down tillrefusal, till they get into hard
rock, and then you can use thatto lift and stabilize the house
(17:31):
.
Those are very good productsand most contractors install
them competently and do a goodjob with it.
So that's not the problem.
The problem is how do youdiagnose it?
You know, does it really needit?
You know, uh, you know.
And, uh, you can put in peersand you would typically put
those either six to eight feeton center, and that depends on,
(17:53):
uh, that depends on the weightof the house and the strength of
the beam between the peers andseveral other factors.
Now, the carbon fiber strips,uh, would not be solved, would
not be used to solve for a housethat's sinking.
They would be used for, like abasement wall that's buckling in
, or maybe some cracks in theconcrete that you want to keep
(18:16):
together, that you don't wantthem to spread, and that kind of
stuff.
Different application, okay,but let's talk about permits for
a minute.
Yeah, uh, salespeople tellhomeowners and realtors all the
time oh, don't worry, you knowthere's no engineer on the front
end, but when we get permits,the engineer is going to look
over everything because he hasto submit a plan that has to be
(18:40):
approved by the city or countyand that engineer is going to
look over everything and makesure it's okay.
That is absolutely 100, nottrue.
That is not true.
Yeah, and I'll tell you why.
Because, uh, engineers can getin trouble if they rely on
somebody that's not, that doesnot work for them, an employee.
(19:02):
If they rely on somebody elsefrom another company to give
them data and they use that datato make recommendations and
those recommendations are wrong,that engineer can be held
liable for that and he could besanctioned by the board.
So so engineers will not ifthey don't gather the data in
the first place, they will not.
(19:22):
They will not opine or commentor anything else about it.
And now let's talk about whenyou get the permit, because you
got to put your engineer seal onthere, right?
What does that mean?
Well, that means that.
Well, first of all, what?
What does the city require?
The city?
The only requirement to puttingin these piers?
(19:42):
The city wants to see is aspacing calculation of, as you
mentioned, how far apart are thepiers.
Are they four feet, are theysix feet, are they eight feet?
The city doesn't want it to betoo far apart so that it droops
between the piers, and so that'sthe only thing that they check
for.
That's the only thing.
So check for that's the onlything.
So you could have the peers onthe wrong side of the house, you
(20:06):
could have too many, you couldhave too little, you might not
even need peers at all, and thepermit process does not correct
for any of those problems.
The only thing they're going tocheck for is are they spaced
right?
That's it is.
Are they spaced right?
That's it.
And for the salesman to say oh,don't worry, the engineer is
(20:30):
going to check everything.
No, the engineer is not goingto check that the peers are on
the right side of the house.
They're not going to check thatthey're too many or too little
or that they're even needed atall.
They're not going to do that.
All they're going to do is aspacing calculation and that's
it.
So don't buy that businessabout.
Oh, don't worry, the engineeris going to check it over, not
true?
Yeah, the only way to get theengineer to check it over is to
(20:50):
make sure he's the first one onthe job and he diagnoses the
problem and he develops thesolution for that diagnosis.
Then you know you're, then youknow you're golden for that
diagnosis, then you know you'regolden.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
I love that.
So do you recommend that everyperson buying a house get one of
these specialized engineersinvolved every time before they
make an offer or during theoffer period?
Or, you know, is theresomething that you know would
make you like if someone waslooking at a house, something
that would trigger them intothinking that, you know, maybe
(21:27):
they should get someone likethat involved?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Right, good question.
So the question is, first ofall, what should I be looking
for?
Because really, I mean, youdon't want to have an engineer
come out every time.
You might never have a problemin your whole life of a house.
That'd be a waste of money.
What you want to do is, if youhave Society of Home Inspectors,
how to recognize these things.
(22:04):
So, very simple, cracks.
Cracks in walls is probably theeasiest thing to see.
If you have cracks in yourwalls and you have more than one
crack, people come to me allthe time and say, hey, I have a
crack.
I'm like a crack, you, you know, unless it's a really big crack
, I'm not gonna be too worriedby a crack, you know.
(22:26):
Uh, usually I'm looking for apattern of cracks, a pattern of
distress, and this is more thancracks.
But let's talk about cracks onthe inside are probably the most
easiest to see.
Cracks on the outside, they'rea little more difficult.
If you have brick and block,then that's pretty easy.
You have snuggle over frame.
It's going to be pretty hard tosee.
(22:47):
You have siding.
It's not going to show up onthe outside at all.
Okay, so cracks, doors out ofsquare, like if you're looking
at a door and it's like an inchhigh on one side and on the
other side it's pinched.
Yeah, that's a door that's outof square.
Okay, at windows, same thingvertically.
(23:07):
You go to close it and the topis, you know, wide, the bottom
is skinny, or vice versa.
That window's out of square.
Uh, cracks in your floor.
Now, the cracks in the almost.
I can guarantee you almostevery floor has cracks in it.
But if those cracks in thefloor are in an area that
(23:30):
there's cracks in the wall, ok,now you have a pattern right.
If you have slopes in yourfloors, like if you got a high
spot and you can noticeably seeit's dropping down, you know, in
an area, by itself maybe Iwouldn't get too worried about
it.
But if there's damage that goesalong with it, now you got a
pattern right.
(23:50):
That's what I want to look foris pattern.
If you see any of thosepatterns, yeah then, and you're
getting ready to sell.
I would call a forensic,geotechnical engineer to have
him come out and say, okay,here's the deal, and he might
say it's no big deal.
Or he might say, well, you know, could be a problem, let's
(24:13):
monitor it.
We'll come back in six monthsand see what the difference is,
and they'll do what they call afloor level survey.
And that's where you take aninstrument called a manometer
and about every five feet oncenter in every room of the
house, you take an elevationreading which tells you how high
or how low it is compared toeverything else in the house.
And then you put that into acomputer program and it plots
(24:35):
out a nice colored 3D visualthat tells you where it's high.
You can see it really easilywhere it's high and where it's
low.
And then if you've got a biglow spot over here and there's a
bunch of damage, well youprobably can say, yeah, it's
probably moved.
But maybe in six months fromnow, if we do it again, it
hasn't moved much.
Okay, well, that means it's notreally doing much.
(24:55):
Patch up the cracks, you know,and be fine, right, uh.
And the engineer will say that.
Or he might say fix thedrainage.
Or you know and be fine, right,and the engineer will say that.
Or he might say fix thedrainage.
Or, you know, is a number ofthings that he might say.
He might say, okay, yeah, aftersix months, yeah, it's
continuing to move.
We better underpin it, you know, stabilize it, you know, level
(25:16):
it a little bit, you know, andthose are the kind of some of
the options that the engineermight bring to the table.
Now, one more thing that wehaven't talked about, yeah, and
that is soil.
Right, this is all about soil.
A lot of people think that soilis just, you know, very simple
one big brown mass underneaththe house, right?
(25:37):
No, it's many, many layersunderneath the house, right?
No, it's.
It's many, many layers, andeach layer is a different
density, a different mineralcontent, different affinity to
water, different reactions towater, and and water travels
between all these layers and itdoes different things to these,
all at different times.
And these layers are notexactly straight, some are
(25:59):
slanted, some disappear.
You know, then, the rocks, and,and it's very, very complicated
, and engineers understand thegeology, uh, geotechnical
engineers understand that the,the geology, how, how those
layers were deposited over manymillions of years, and they do
borings all the time.
They're familiar in an area,kind of the pattern, and, and so
(26:20):
they understand that.
And, uh, then you start tounderstand that one of the types
of clay soils that can be veryproblematic is clay soil.
Okay, clay, uh, is very uniquebecause it's a very, very tiny
particle.
It's so small that in order tolook at an individual particle
(26:41):
you need a scanning tunnelingmicroscope, uh, and it has a
slight negative charge and waterhas a slight positive charge
and they're attracted to eachother and so it pulls the water
over.
My favorite saying is claysucks because it sucks the water
right to it and, and when itdoes that, it it, it distributes
(27:03):
the water particle, it tries todistribute it between each one
of those clay particles.
Well, they're so tiny that itblows up when it does that.
So clay swells when it gets wetand when it dries it shrinks
back down.
Well, that's problematic.
If you have a house, that's ontop of it, okay, and uh, so, uh,
if you have wet seasons and dryseasons, you might go through
(27:26):
cyclical, you know, shrink andswell.
Right, you want to understandthose, those behaviors.
Now, the reason that'simportant is because a lot of
foundation repair, uh, suppliers, the guys that make the peers
that the contractors put in,they train the contractors how
to recognize the problem and howto you know, basically put in
(27:46):
peers right For everything.
Well, if it's heave, if you'vegot a heat, you know if you've
got part of the house that'sheaved up and the other parts
lower.
You know well, they're probablygoing to say, yeah, let's raise
the lower part up.
Well, the lower part didn't godown, it's the other part that
went up.
You shouldn't be trying tolevel it that way.
That doesn't make any sense.
(28:07):
You could do damage to thehouse, and it's not a good idea.
You want to deal with theheaving problem.
You want to deal with the rightproblem.
After all, you could put thepiers in, you might level it out
(28:41):
, and then the heave continues.
Well, then you're going to beright back in that same scenario
that we talked about earlierwhere the contractor says you
know, it's not my fault, youknow you didn't help yourself.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
So a good engineer will understand heave versus
settlement and make sure theyunderstand the problem to give
you the right solution for theright problem.
Yeah, now, have you ever heard?
Because I've seen someinspectors that obviously are
not geoengineers, you know, andthey're not.
They're not the specialiststhat you're talking about, but
sometimes they'll throw outthere like oh, it's just the
grading around the house that'scausing that.
If you just change the grading,like make the soil go away from
(29:06):
the house so that water flowsdown instead of like that, is
that something?
Does that make sense?
Is that a true thing?
Or is that just something thatpeople just kind of say know a
true thing?
Or is that just something thatpeople just kind of say I?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
I say it's good advice.
I mean, every house should haveproper grading, and the code
for for for residential codesays that there needs to be six
inches of drop for 10 feet awayon the house, and if you don't
have that, then you have poordrainage.
Now you might be in soil thathas doesn't make any difference,
you know it's not going to evermove.
Then you have poor drainage.
Now you might be in soil thatdoesn't make any difference.
(29:42):
You know it's not going to evermove and you know whatever.
But if you have problematicsoils, you're going to know it
and the grading is going to beone of the things that is going
to be a problem for you, and soit's a good idea to make sure
that grading and drainage isproperly done.
(30:02):
Now, that's harder than it seemsbecause, like, well, now you
have this sidewalk that runsalong the side of the house and
you know you've got a foot ofplanter between it and the house
.
Well, that traps the water.
You've got planters in front.
What do you do with those?
You have to kind of think itthrough.
It's not as easy as it seems.
It's good advice, though.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Okay, well, no, that's good to know, because I
always mean, I think, when I wasin the forensic engineering
business.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
every report we recommended that the grading and
drainage be improved.
You know we recommend putgutters on the house and have
the downspouts and then have thedownspouts piped 20 feet away.
It doesn't do any good to put agutter on and have it dump
right at the corner of the house.
Now you've got all the thewhole roof concentrated in one
(31:04):
area.
That's that's not a greatscenario.
You want to get it away?
Yeah, we recommended that.
Almost every house we looked at.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah.
So it sounds like, you know, ifwe were going to summarize kind
of like some top tips, you know, if someone was listening to
this and maybe they're, uh, youknow, a seller, um, and they're
thinking about, uh, puttingtheir house on the market, um,
or they've, you know, justpurchased it and they just want
to, you know, be proactiveinstead of reactive, what would
(31:32):
be like some top things, youknow, obviously, like the, the
drainage, making sure thatthat's correct, and and things
like that.
But are there like some topthings that like, if someone
came to you and just said, hey,what can I do to avoid having
any of these issues and havingyou know to go through this
process, what tips would yougive people?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Well, it's a little more complicated than that,
because we were talking ingeneralities about, like, proper
drainage, right?
Yeah, well, part of it, part ofit depends on, well, what's
been the soil conditions for thelast two or 300,000 years.
You know, you know, are you inLouisiana, where it's been wet
for two or 300,000 years, maybeTexas, maybe Florida, right?
(32:13):
Uh well, in that case you don'twant it to dry out.
If it dries out and it's clays,now Florida, there's not a lot
of clays.
But, uh, you don't want it todry out.
If it dries out and it's clays,now in Florida there's not a
lot of clays.
But if there are clays in yoursoil and it dries out, it's
going to shrink, right.
And if you're on the edge andit shrinks, that's going to be
settlement on the edge.
They got a lot of problems withthat in Texas.
(32:34):
So what do they do, texas,louisiana?
What they do is they tellpeople put a soaker around your
perimeter of your house with atimer that turns on every day,
or maybe twice a day, to keepsthat soil nice and wet.
Now, you would be like insaneto do that in Arizona, where I'm
at, you know, it's very, verydry and we get eight inches of
(32:54):
rain a year in a good year, youknow you just don't want to do
that.
So part of it is you have toknow what the recommendations
are for your area, and it doeschange regionally a lot.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Huh, that's really good to know.
So if someone you know wantedto know specifically, they
should go to a geo engineer tobe able to know what their soil
is and what the best plan ofaction is for them.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah, that's a really good question.
I mean, in Texas you can getthat information pretty readily
because Texas is kind of likethe epicenter of foundation
problems.
But in other areas it may notbe quite so easy.
I know there's a lot of reallygood engineers in Kansas, uh,
and there's some good ones kindof uh, along the mid Atlantic
(33:49):
area, um, but other than thatthere, I mean they're out there,
they're on my directory, but,uh, you know, like Texas, you
could probably Google whatshould I do for my soils, and
it'll probably, you know, comeup for Texas, you know, put a
soaker around your house, youknow.
Now again, maybe not in SanAntonio, that's a little drier,
(34:12):
right.
So you know, houston, yeah forsure.
But you know you might be ableto get that information by
Google, googling it, you might.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Yeah, no, that's such good advice though, and I love
that Cause I would have nevereven thought about.
I mean, I grew up in Oklahoma,um, but I live in Ohio now and
you know, obviously, totaldifferent um you know weather
and um, you know in in Oklahomadifferent you know weather and
(34:44):
you know in Oklahoma it's ironicthat there are no basements
because of you know the soil andthe clay and all of the stuff
that's underneath it, so hard.
And then here in Ohio, likeit's rare to have a house, not
have a basement.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
So you know, part of that is just what they call the
freeze frost depth, because youknow, the farther north you go
and the higher the elevationsyou go, you know, the more it
freezes, and so what you have isthe water that's in the soil
(35:13):
below the house.
If it freezes, it actuallyswells also, and so what you
want to do is build the footingsdown below that frost steps.
And so you know, when you're inOhio you might have to go down
three feet, maybe four feet, youknow, and in some places you
know you got to go down eightfeet.
You know, maybe not in Ohio,but some parts of the United
(35:34):
States you got to go down eightfeet.
Well, if you're going to digdown that far, you might as well
just put in a basement whileyou're at it.
Right, I mean, not that muchmore work, and that's part of
what it is.
I typically see a lot ofbasements up North and a lot of
slabs down South.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, exactly.
So obviously this is somethingthat you're you know that you're
passionate about and very, veryknowledgeable about it.
So is that kind of what led youdown the path to writing this
book and, you know, creatingthis directory?
You know, I guess just kind ofwalk me through, like what, what
made you think that you know,hey, I should write this book,
(36:12):
hey, I should create thisdirectory?
You know, was it just that youhad multiple like people that
you know kept giving the wrongadvice and you thought, oh my
gosh, I need to help people?
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah, well, I mean, I'm uniquely qualified to opine
on this subject because I wasone of the few contractors that
had engineers work on the frontend and I had a foundation
repair company and I could see,I mean, I didn't start out with
engineers, I started out withjust a foundation repair company
(36:43):
and I knew a lot of engineersand pretty soon I you know, I,
when I first got in, I didn'tknow anything and I, my supplier
, taught me everything, likethey do with every contractor.
But then I started.
You know, I had a lot of,because of my degree in
architecture, I had a lot ofengineering friends and forensic
engineering friends.
And pretty soon I startedtalking to them and I'm thinking
(37:07):
, wait, wait, I think we'redoing this wrong.
I got sales guys that areselling things and they're not
really engineers and they're notreally qualified and they're
getting it wrong most of thetime.
I think we need a bettermousetrap.
And so I eventually hired anengineer and built a forensic
(37:29):
engineering company and I'd goto conferences and I'd see
people in the network and I'dtalk to them.
Contractors, they're all friends, you know.
They're all doing it wrong.
Yeah, I, I tried to help them.
They're just not interested,they're just not.
They just want to make moneyand you know, kind of feel good
(37:56):
that they're helping people,which is fine, but really the
industry is not doing it theright way.
They're more focused on thebottom line and there's some
consolidation, some changinghappening in the industry.
There's private equitycompanies that are going around
(38:17):
and buying up foundation repaircompanies and rolling them up
into big, big companies that aretraded on the New York stock
exchange and it's all about thenumbers you know, and uh.
So it's going to become moredifficult for homeowners because
you're going to be up againstsome, some bigger players that
are more sophisticated and uhare a little more difficult to
(38:42):
push back with.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah, I love that.
I love that.
Well, bob, thank you so muchfor taking time out of your day
coming on here sharing all ofyour vast knowledge.
Um, obviously, I will have allthe links in the show notes.
Um, you know, are you on socialmedia or do you have a website?
Okay, perfect, yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
My website is the same for my book foundation
repair secrets and you can getmy book on my website or you can
get it from Amazon.
Uh, you can uh look me up, uh,as the dirt whisperer uh, on
Facebook and you know Instagramand LinkedIn, and you know, I
think I'm, I think I'm on uh uhX and and uh, uh, I think I'm,
(39:30):
I'm even on Tik TOK, I think Idon't know.
I have a social media team thatdoes all that stuff, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah, I love that.
Yeah, that's amazing, I lovethat.
And so, like we said in thebeginning, it's RK Bob Brown.
Right, if you're looking forstuff, because obviously, if you
Google Bob Brown, a lot ofdifferent things come up.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Right, You'll get some sports jockey in Texas or
something you know, some radiopersonality.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Right, I love it.
I love it.
Yes, well, thank you again,truly appreciate it.
Like I said, I will have allthe links in the show notes.
So definitely, you know, makesure that you know anyone that's
listening.
Please make sure that you sharethis with anyone that you think
could really use thisinformation.
That is the greatest complimentthat you can give Bob and
(40:26):
myself.
Make sure that you're leaving areview, because feedback is a
gift, and make sure that you'refollowing the show so you never
miss an episode and you don'tmiss out on great information
like Bob just shared with us.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Right, and, by the way, if you share with me when
you're going to publish this, mysocial media team will pump it
up for you as well.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Oh, perfect, perfect, yeah, absolutely, I will do
that.
Well, thank you so much and wewill see you next time.
On Come to Find Out.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Very good.
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