March 26, 2024 • 46 mins
March 26, 2024
128. Navigating Foundation Repairs and Real Estate Challenges with Bob Brown
As anyone who's owned a home knows, foundation issues are a nightmare, marked by cracked walls, uneven floors, and malfunctioning doors and windows. In this episode of "Homeowners Be Aware," George Siegal sits down with Bob Brown, a leading figure in foundation repair diagnosis and author of "Foundation Repair Secrets: Learn How to Protect Yourself and Save Thousands." Brown emphasizes the foundational role (pun intended) the foundation plays in a home's integrity, making it crucial for homeowners to address any signs of distress immediately.
Listeners are treated to a deep dive into the complexities of foundation repair, the varying approaches based on geographical location, and the surprising impact of factors like soil composition and nearby trees. This episode is a must-listen for homeowners seeking to understand the importance of their home's foundation, how to identify potential issues and navigate the often-confusing world of repairs. hmxkk8nz
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
George Siegal (00:00):
Anybody that's ever owned a home will tell you
one problem you don't like tofind is something wrong with
your foundation.
The signs can be cracked ordeteriorating walls, uneven
floors and sticking windows anddoors.
When these things start toreveal themselves, what should
you do about it?
My guest today is Bob Brown.
He's a speaker, patentedinnovator, the foremost
(00:22):
authority on foundation repairdiagnosis and the author of the
book Foundation Repair SecretsLearn how to Protect Yourself
and Save Thousands.
Before you start over-googlingto figure out what's wrong, you
need to hear what Bob has to say.
I'm George Siegal and this isHomeowners Be Aware the podcast
that teaches you everything youneed to know about being a
(00:44):
homeowner.
Bob, thank you so much forjoining me today, happy to be
here Now.
A foundation of a house issomething that most people
probably take for granted and Iimagine it depends on what part
of the country you live in andthe foundation challenges.
So, overall, tell us howimportant.
I mean it sounds obvious justin the name it's the foundation.
(01:05):
How important is that to ahouse?
Bob Brown (01:08):
Well, I mean, if your foundation is not right, the
rest of your house won'tfunction properly.
Your doors and windows won'twork, you'll get cracks in your
walls, you can even get leaks inyour roof.
George Siegal (01:19):
So it's important that your foundation operate
optimally Now when I'm goingaround my neighborhood I live in
Florida, I live in Tampa andyou see them put the base there,
they pound away on it forseveral days, put all the pipes
in and then they pour thefoundation.
Is it done differently indifferent parts of the country?
Tell us what like for each.
I know you can't describe all50 states, but is there a
(01:41):
general way to do it versus anunusual way?
Bob Brown (01:45):
Yes, in the colder climates you're going to see
more crawl spaces and morebasements, and the reason you
see more basements up north isbecause you have a frost depth
and you need to dig down yourfootings for frost depths, and
sometimes that can be quite deep.
It could be three feet or so ormore, and if you're digging
(02:06):
down that far, it's not thatmuch farther to keep digging for
a basement, and so quite oftenyou'll see up north basements
and quite often kind of in themid-range or even up north
you'll see more crawl spacesthan slabs on a grade.
George Siegal (02:26):
Now, here in Florida there's a lot of
elevated houses.
There's houses on stilts.
So what would you consider?
The foundation, the base wherethe ground is, where the pylons
go into the ground, or theelevation where the first floor
starts?
Bob Brown (02:38):
Down in the ground there's a deep foundation system
and can be installed in avariety of ways.
But piles and piers and allkinds of things to go in and
install a deep basement system,or, sorry, a deep foundation
system, and they'll extend upand then they'll have a floor
(03:00):
structure.
So a lot of people get mixed upbetween the floor and the
basement and a lot of especiallywith slabs on grade they think
that the slab is part of thebasement when in fact it's not.
It's the floor slab.
Now, sometimes with apost-tension slab it's kind of
the same thing, but not always.
George Siegal (03:17):
Usually not so just to dumb it down for me
because I get so easily confused.
So the foundation would be thevery bottom level.
Bob Brown (03:27):
Right, that's where the foundation is support the
structural loads.
George Siegal (03:33):
So then, what are we looking at in terms of?
Most people aren't involved inthat part of the process.
You know, even if you're buyingnew construction, they don't
really want you out there untilthey're pretty far along.
Bob Brown (03:44):
So how do you keep?
George Siegal (03:45):
an eye on that.
How do you know if it's beingdone right, you know.
Bob Brown (03:49):
I will tell you that there's probably no way for a
lay person to really knowwhether it's being done right,
except maybe very obvious LikeI've seen like them pouring
concrete right after a realheavy rain and there's mud down
in the footings or something youknow.
But most of the time it getsbuilt properly.
(04:10):
And the foundations.
The reason for foundationproblems is not necessarily the
construction, it's rather thesoil, and the soil is
complicated and unpredictableand over time it changes and
that's what the foundation sitson and it doesn't really matter
that much.
I mean, you could have afoundation made out of solid
(04:33):
titanium and it's still floatingon the soil, right, so it could
still have problems.
George Siegal (04:39):
Now I had an arborist out to my house
recently we have a big grand oakin front of the house and he
was saying that a lot of houses,the trees around it cause
problems for foundations.
How conscious do you have to beof the trees around you?
Bob Brown (04:51):
That's right.
Trees can cause a problem in acouple of different ways.
So one of them is obviously ifthe trees are real close, the
roots can interfere with thefooting, and I've seen roots
break up footings and cause likea peak in the floor slab and
crack walls.
I've seen that happen.
(05:11):
But the other way that peopledon't quite think of a lot is
the fact that in areas where youhave clay soils, clay soils
expand.
They call them expansive soils.
Right, Everybody's heard ofexpansive soils, but they don't
really understand what they mean.
What they mean is if you haveclay soil that's expansive, then
(05:33):
when it gets wet it swells andwhen it gets dry it shrinks up,
and so those changes inequilibrium is what causes the
problems, not necessarily theinitial makeup.
Well, if you've got soil aroundthe house that's in equilibrium
and you've got a giant treesucking out moisture in one part
of the house, those soils aregoing to shrink more than the
(05:53):
others and you're going to causesettlement, and that happens
quite often in areas withexpansive clay soils.
George Siegal (06:00):
Now I follow a number of home inspectors on
Instagram and they show mepictures of.
I saw one recently where theywere pouring the foundation and
there was a big plastic cup thatwas on the ground.
So when the cup was pulled away, there was now an opening in
the foundation.
Now he said, structurallythat's probably not going to
affect it, but is it just giveyou an indication of how sloppy
they might have been when theywere doing the project?
Bob Brown (06:23):
Oh, yeah, I mean, hey , we're dealing with
construction workers that quiteoften make a lot of mistakes,
are not educated properly and,let's face it, you know every
industry has a shortage ofproperly trained people and
construction is really, reallyhaving a struggle right now.
(06:46):
You just can't find people.
I mean, I sold by company lastyear but it was a super
structure.
I mean a super hard thing tojust define guys to you know,
basic guys just to work.
You know we'll train them.
Even then we couldn't find themand we quit.
We quit recruiting from theconstruction industry because
(07:07):
there was just nobody to recruitfrom.
We just wanted to find guysthat wanted to work hard, right
and and trained them ourselves.
George Siegal (07:15):
Now, sometimes you see a foundation poured and
it sits there for a couple ofweeks and then sometimes they
start building on it right away.
Is there a certain cure periodthat's needed to properly let a
foundation take hold?
Bob Brown (07:29):
Well, concrete cures on an asymptotic scale.
It starts out curing veryquickly but it doesn't happen
right away.
It takes 28 days to reach 90,whatever it is 95% of a strength
.
I think it takes seven days toreach two thirds of a strength
and it's only half half strongafter maybe a day or two or
(07:54):
three.
So it does take time forconcrete to to cure up.
However, you know, depending onthe foundation type, they'll go
in and if it's a post-tensionslab, they'll go in and tighten
up the cables and tension thecables.
After, I think, three days andgenerally speaking, you know you
(08:18):
start framing a house.
You know the wood doesn'treally weigh that much, right,
it doesn't.
You don't get a lot of weighton the foundation until they
start putting the roof tiles ontop of the roof, and you'll see
them do that.
They'll get the house singlesshingles and they'll just set
them up there.
They won't necessarily lay themout, they'll just set them up
(08:40):
there and that's to weight thehouse and it's a lot of weight
and they want it to kind of moveand settle, because all homes
settle during construction,right, and they settle the most
when you put that weight up onthe roof.
And so most of the time they'llget that up there and they'll
put the put the tiles on, andthen they'll wait for it to have
a little bit of settlement acouple of weeks or something
(09:02):
like that and then they'll dothe drywall, because if they
don't, then the drywall startscracking right away and then
they have to fix it right.
So that's not a that's not agood plan.
George Siegal (09:11):
Now, does it make a difference if it's a block
house, cause a lot of the houseshere are first floor block and
then, and quite often, well, notenough, but a lot of them are
second floor block also.
Bob Brown (09:21):
Block is quite a bit heavier than wood.
So yeah, you might, you mighthave a little longer waiting
period for block, that's, that'strue.
I didn't think about that.
But and typically when you putthe block in, the block's not
that heavy.
Well, it is heavy, but what'sheavier is the grouting of the
cells with concrete and rebar inthere.
That that contributes a lot ofweight and it's not just a
(09:43):
little bit.
I mean it should be.
You know every, you know it'snot just a little bit of a
grouting 32 to 40 inches oncenter vertically and then
horizontally every four feet tohave what they call a bond beam
and all that concrete ways whenyou start putting it in the in
the cells.
George Siegal (10:00):
So if I'm buying an existing house, do I want a
foundation inspection, or shouldmy home inspector be able to
see the signs of a foundationthat has problems?
Bob Brown (10:13):
I do the training for the American Society of Home
Inspectors here in Phoenix Ashy,they call it right and I mean
I'll train them to know what tolook for, but they don't really
have the skills.
They don't really have theskills to like diagnose whether
(10:38):
it's heave or settlement, orwhether you need peers or how
bad it is.
That really should require anengineer and, by the way, should
never be done by a foundationrepair contractor, even though
they do it more than anybodyelse.
We'll talk about that when youget the chance but should be
done by a licensed professionalengineer.
Now the problem with real estatetransactions is that you have a
(11:01):
10 day inspection window andthe home inspector goes in and
they might see a problem, right.
Well, then they get the reportand they turn it in like two
days before the end of thewindow an inspection window and
so then in a panic, the realtorreaches out to try to find
somebody and the first thingthey do is they Google and who
(11:23):
comes up?
The foundation repair companies.
They call a foundation repaircompany and it's like, hey, can
you give me a report in two days?
You know well, I mean afoundation repair contractor
will go out there and give anestimate, maybe in two days, but
that's not really a foundationinvestigation and there's no way
an engineer can get it done intwo days.
It's just physically impossible.
(11:43):
Might be able to get it done in10 days if they're really have
nothing on their backlog andthey can really do it fast.
But I encourage most realtorsto put a clause in their
contract that says hey, if afoundation problem is identified
, then we need another 10 daywindow to get an expert in here
(12:08):
to give us an assessment.
And what usually happens,unfortunately, is the they call
a foundation repair contractorwho wants to sell a big job and
he shows up and says, hey, youneed $80,000 in peers.
Well, guess what happens to thelisting?
The whole thing blows up andeverybody goes their separate
ways.
Right, that's what usuallyhappens.
George Siegal (12:29):
Now you know, there's so many things that when
you're buying a house that youhave to think about and I can
honestly say that in all thehouses that I've bought I've
never had to or thought ofbringing in a foundation person.
I've usually just relied on theinspector calling something out
as an alert.
Now, the way you're explainingthis it sounds like that's a
missing link, much like I thinka lot of people need to maybe
(12:51):
bring an insurance agent withthem to find out if the house is
insurable.
You know, there's things wejust miss that we end up paying
for later.
Bob Brown (13:01):
Right, yeah, and you might.
You might not have to, like,bring the insurance guy out, but
you can check it for claims,right, they can do that online.
It's a little more difficult.
For foundation inspection, youreally need to have eyes on it,
right, you need to, you know, doa full inspection, and it needs
to be done really by a licensedprofessional engineer and not
(13:26):
just any old engineer.
By the way, it needs to be aforensic.
I prefer a geotechnical engineer, and the reason I prefer a
geotechnical is because astructure everybody calls a
structural engineer really thewrong guy to call, and the
reason is is because they'llcall him out and he'll say, oh
okay, there's no structuraldeficiencies.
Okay, well, could it become astructural deficiency?
(13:50):
Oh yeah, if it keeps moving, itcould be a structural
deficiency.
Well, is it going to quit?
Is it going to keep moving?
Well, you need to call ageotechnical engineer because
it's a soil problem.
So you just wasted all yourtime and effort calling a
structural engineer when youshould have just called a
geotech in the first place, aforensic geotech, not a regular
geotech.
(14:10):
Most engineers work in newconstruction and they work in
things like infrastructure,freeways, dams, sewer systems,
water systems.
You know all those kinds ofthings, maybe new buildings
right, and very few work inresidential.
Even fewer do forensic work,and those are the guys you need
(14:32):
to call out.
George Siegal (14:33):
So what are we looking at?
Cost wise for that?
Because you know, most peoplebitch if they're going to pay
$400 or $500 for an inspection.
Then they're told well, maybeyou need to get a termite
inspection now you got to get anAC guy out here.
So where do you fit into theequation?
Well, I don't.
I'm not a.
What you're talking about,though I'm not saying I'm not
expecting you to show up in myhouse.
Bob Brown (14:52):
You sold your business, but yeah Well and I
had a forensic engineeringbusiness and a foundation repair
business, so I understand bothparts of it.
And you're right.
I mean that is a problem for abuyer right, because a lot of
engineers will charge $3,000.
Now I'm trying to build a groupof engineers and give them the
(15:12):
tools to be able to produce itfor less than a thousand.
But that's a bit of work, I getit, but that's my mission in
life.
I'm trying to help the publicby giving engineers tools to
make them more efficient so thatthey can compete with free,
which is what you get with thefoundation repair company.
George Siegal (15:33):
Yeah, I just don't.
I can't get my head aroundseeing how anybody buying a
house especially if it's in that$500,000 to a million or
whatever.
Nobody's going to pay for that.
Bob Brown (15:47):
And I totally agree and it's a problem.
It really should be on thelisting, on the selling agent's
end, to be proactive, to knowgood experts and to bring them
in before they even list thehouse and say do an inspection,
give us a clean bill of health,or else tell us what needs to be
(16:08):
done and then supervise it andinspect it so that you can give
us a clean bill of health whenit's done.
And that's the way it should bedone.
And a lot of times what happensinstead is they call the
foundation repair company whogives them a giant bill to
repair the foundation.
Everybody goes their separateways the seller fires the
(16:33):
listing agent, does cosmeticrepairs, hides it, finds a new
listing agent and puts it up forsale, and then, if it's a
continuing problem, somebodyfinds out about it three years
down the road.
Right, that's what happens mostof the time.
George Siegal (16:52):
Yeah, disclosure laws are so weak in so many
jurisdictions around the countrythat it's like playing hot
potatoes.
So it almost seems like thatshould be something that, if
you're looking at a house, maybeyou insist that the homeowner
stand behind the foundation,because that shouldn't be your
problem If they're living on adecaying property, it shouldn't
become your problem.
Bob Brown (17:13):
And it's like, as we talked about, it's very
difficult for a.
I mean, think about it A guythat's interested in the house,
not even sure he's gonna buy itright, is gonna spend a grand
checking it out when he mightnot even buy it.
I mean it's not very tenable.
My hope is that someday that afoundation inspection with
(17:38):
Topolines and the history andthe damage maps and all the
things that are required in aproper report be done on every
transaction or prior to, withina certain amount of time prior
to, so that there's a record ofthe history, some of like a,
like a Carfax, yeah, like Carfax, yeah, something like that, so
(18:00):
that it's transparent andeverybody knows what they're
getting into.
George Siegal (18:06):
Absolutely.
I think every house should betagged by that and I know that's
unfortunate for somebody who'sgot a problem house, but that's
like a store selling somethingwith a stain on it and they just
hide it.
It shouldn't become the buyer'sproblem and we just kick it
down the road, and it just seemsto happen way too often.
I know here in Florida we alsohave sinkholes.
(18:27):
I would imagine that there's nofoundation that's gonna save
you from that, is there?
Bob Brown (18:32):
Nope, you got a sinkhole the whole house will
fall in, or a part of it, orwhatever.
Yeah, there's no stop.
George Siegal (18:39):
Yeah, you can't even get an insurance, isn't
paying for it.
They've now realized-.
Bob Brown (18:43):
They used to in Florida, but they quit doing it.
George Siegal (18:46):
Yeah, like a lot of things they've quit doing
here but they've probably gonehey, that's a money loser, let's
stop paying for that.
It's exactly right, yep.
So I just see it as a realchallenge.
I mean, I see the importance ofit.
It's just like getting ageological study of your
property.
I think it's easier when it's abrand new house, because the
builder, at least for a certainperiod of time, has to stand
behind that foundation.
(19:06):
So once I have the house andit's in my possession, what
should I be looking for?
Or even if I'm looking at ahouse and haven't bought it yet,
so make me my own little juniorfoundation expert here what are
some things I can look for?
Bob Brown (19:18):
Well, observationally , you're gonna notice if you've
got foundation problems, you'regonna notice cracks in your
walls, typically interior walls,exterior walls maybe, but
exterior is not climate control.
That can crack for a lot ofreason.
Now, block stair step cracks,you'll see, and that's pretty
obvious.
But stucco over wood framecracks for a lot of reasons.
(19:40):
Interior drywall yeah, you'llnotice it right away.
Doors and windows that are outof square, kind of pinched,
maybe a larger gap on one sideof the door and pinched on the
other side, it doesn't operatevery good.
Man Windows, same thing, right,sloped floors.
Those are the things thatyou're gonna notice.
George Siegal (20:00):
Now do you see, in areas where gosh in Arizona,
you have it probably with a longperiod where you go without
rain, but what about areas wherethey have flooding and they
have water problems?
That probably causes a wholedifferent set of issues for
foundations.
Bob Brown (20:16):
It might, but the bigger problem is expansive
soils, and some areas have themand some areas don't.
And expansive soils arecyclical.
They may go up and down and upand down, and all that moving
eventually causes problems.
Now, if you have an area withgiant flooding, that's gonna be
obvious.
You could have scouring, youcould have water that goes into
(20:40):
down to layers where there areexpansive soils that maybe
typically don't get wet right,so you can have those kinds of
problems as well.
Moisture is always the catalyst, always is, and changes in
moisture is what causes theproblems, not necessarily
moisture.
So if you're under a constantflood all the time, if you're
wet all the time, likeLouisiana's, wet all the time,
(21:02):
well it's gonna be what it'sgonna be.
But like Texas, on the otherhand, texas you have dry seasons
and you have wet seasons andyou've got expansive soil.
That's why there's so manyfoundation contractors and so
many counties and problems inTexas because of that
combination.
George Siegal (21:20):
Now I've had home inspectors tell me that you
need to really watch the gradingaround your foundation.
You wanna make sure that'ssloping away from it, not
towards it.
How, on top of that, do peopleneed to be Super on top?
Bob Brown (21:34):
of it.
I mean most of the time whenyou get a report from an
engineer.
Almost every report says fixthe grading and drainage and
then nobody does it right andthen they wonder why they have
problems.
So it really is important andquite often on modern houses
there's no way to make surfacegrading work.
(21:56):
I mean you're supposed to slopesix inches over 10 feet.
Well, you got a five foot sideyard.
How's that work?
Well, then you have to providetheoretically, by code anyway.
Slope a certain slope, 2% slopeout to the street.
Well, there's no elevationdifference between the house and
the street to get enough waterto go out there.
(22:18):
So really, the only way toreally make it work is to put
gutters with hard pipe drainageto get the water 20 feet away
from the house.
And almost no builder does thatright.
Well, I don't know any buildersthat do it, unless it's a
custom home.
But those are the things youneed to do.
You'll get that recommendationalmost all the time from
(22:39):
engineers and I'll just say tothe short work just do it now
and wait for the engineer right,true, and I bet a lot of
builders just put that into theground, but it doesn't go
anywhere, just to make it looklike.
Well, I've seen some boneheadedthings like they put gutters and
the hard pipes are perforatedso it just ejects all the water
(23:00):
right out of the house.
That's the worst thing youcould do and I've seen that
happen.
George Siegal (23:04):
Yeah, another thing.
I bet a lot of people learnthis the hard way.
If you have a tile roof and youhave gutters and it's raining,
the gutters are really worthlessat that point because the water
just comes shooting off theroof and lands all over your
yard anyway.
Bob Brown (23:17):
Well, we have a lot of tile roofs in Arizona and so
the gutter companies havelearned to put bigger gutters on
.
They catch us most of that, butit is a challenge, and
especially at the corners andyou can put up a little higher,
like you know corner thing thatcatch extra water, where the
water comes down in a hurry.
Right, there's things you cando.
(23:37):
You're never gonna catch it all, right, I mean, it's impossible
.
You can't catch all the watercoming out of the sky right next
to the house.
So how does that work?
You know the goal is, you know,get as much as you can, right.
George Siegal (23:50):
So when you're at a party, do people come up to
you and say are you the dirtwhisperer?
Bob Brown (23:55):
I've had a lot of people ask me, that's for sure.
George Siegal (23:59):
What's it like having a title like that?
I think it's kind of cool tohave a title.
Bob Brown (24:03):
I like it.
You know it's interesting, it'sfun and you know dirt is an
interesting subject.
I mean.
A lot of people think that, youknow, dirt is just one
homogeneous, massive brownunderneath the house.
It's not that way at all.
Dirt gets deposited in layersand every layer is a little bit
(24:23):
different more different density, different mineral content,
different affinities for water.
You know lots of differentthings, and in each of those
layers they're not exactlyparallel.
They all kind of, you know theywere deposited by nature,
organically, right, and so somemay be high, some may be low,
and the builder may have cutinto a few while he was, you
(24:46):
know, or piled on top.
Dirt can be really, reallycomplicated, which is why you
have geotechnical engineers,right.
George Siegal (24:55):
Yeah, you know, years ago a buddy of mine, good
friend of mine, kept me waitingin a bar two hours while he was
late and when he showed up hegoes.
I was with the dirt man.
He was a construction guy andat the time I rolled my eyes
like the dirt man.
I think it could be prettyfascinating hanging out with the
dirt man now.
Bob Brown (25:11):
Yeah, lots of fun things with soil.
I do a lot of hiking with thegeotechnical engineer and you
know we're always talking aboutthis natural process and rocks
and look at this one and allkinds of stuff you know.
George Siegal (25:23):
Yeah, no, no.
I love that stuff now.
I wish I wish I cared moreabout it when I was younger.
Now tell me about the book.
Bob Brown (25:29):
So I wrote the book.
Well, it's taken me about fiveyears to write it, but it was
essentially started with thegenesis of a lot of just a lot
of blogs that I blogged about,and then I eventually took all
those and put them in order andcreated a book.
But it's been a lot of fun.
(25:50):
I'm considering another book atthis point, a follow on book,
but the book basically has twopremises.
Number one, why you should nevercall a foundation repair
company to get diagnosis.
You can call them for repairs.
They're good at that.
And then the second part of itis people forget about expensive
(26:11):
soils and particularly in heave.
They don't understand whatheave is, and so I wanted to
show that there was a solutionfor heave.
Now the reason that's importantis because the traditional
foundation repair industry sellsthese piling products and they
ignore heave because they don'thave a solution for it.
So they don't train their salesguys.
(26:32):
They don't do anything aboutheave because you know they
don't want to go home hungry andit just confuses things.
They don't have the training toreally understand it very well.
So I wanted to show that thereare tools for it and it can be
addressed.
George Siegal (26:51):
There's a couple of things I wanted to touch on
in our remaining time, justbecause I think it's some things
that could help people the most, and we might have covered a
few of these already.
Five red flags that meanfoundation issues to look out
for when buying a new home.
The five red flags.
Bob Brown (27:07):
Well, we sort of discussed them already Cracks in
walls, sloping floors, babycracks in floors Although floors
crack for a lot of reasonsDoors and windows out of square,
and being aware of the geologyof where you're at, what the
(27:28):
soils are like and you can goonto the NCRS website and kind
of get an idea about what thesoils are in your particular
neighborhood.
They usually print maps andthose kinds of things for people
to understand, and so those arethe key things that you should
be aware of at least whenwalking through the house.
And I've had realtors saythings like oh Jay, don't worry
(27:51):
about that door, that won't open, or the crack right next to it.
Those are just cosmetic andwe're going to get that fixed.
I can't believe a realtor wouldever say that, but they have.
George Siegal (28:01):
And that's kind of why I asked you the question
again, because I've heard thatfrom them.
I've heard them.
They look at you and go oh,that's just normal settling.
Bob Brown (28:08):
Yeah, what should I think when I hear that you
should think oh boy, you areopining and leaving yourself
open for a giant lawsuit,because realtors should never
opine on the characterization ofanything foundation related.
George Siegal (28:22):
Yeah, and it wasn't the.
It wasn't the realtor, it wasactually a builder that said
that to me.
I go why is that doing that?
That's just normal settling.
Bob Brown (28:31):
Well, builders are almost as bad as foundation
repair companies.
So you know they have a here inArizona.
They have a 10 year, oractually an eight year, statute
of limitations and if youdiscover it the eighth year, you
get a ninth year.
So during that period of time,if you make enough noise, well,
(28:53):
first, if you complain to thebuilder, he'll send out, you
know, a rep.
You know who will come out andtell you that it's nothing, that
is normal, and then, if itkeeps happening, they'll send
out.
You know, if it's bad enough,they'll send out a drywall guy
to patch all the cracks.
And then, if it keeps happening, he'll just keep doing that,
keep sending out the drywall guy, and eventually you know you're
(29:15):
either going to run out of gasor you're going to lose interest
, or, if you complain hardenough, he'll send out his
engineer.
Well, the problem is it's thesame engineer that designed the
house.
So what's the?
You know it's not like he'sgoing to say, oh yeah, we
screwed up.
He's not going to do that.
(29:36):
He's going to protect thebuilder because that's who his
client is right, and so he's notreally a, he's not really an
independent engineer, he'sbiased, and so you shouldn't
really trust anything they say.
To be honest with you.
George Siegal (29:54):
That's true.
So the places I've inevitablyseen cracks are in like crown
molding.
Is that from foundationproblems?
It can be.
Bob Brown (30:05):
Sometimes you'll see a gap underneath the floor and
that's, you know when the flooris dropping.
Or if you see, like the crownmolding, where it kind of
wobbles back and forth, you knowthat's from the floor pushing
on it.
You know what we call crammingcramming the baseboard and that
is from the floor pushing upward.
And that can be either from thesettling going the footing
(30:27):
going down settling, or from thefloor heating up from expansive
soils could be either one.
George Siegal (30:34):
Now, when you have problems with a foundation,
can anything be fixed?
Or is it usually not covered byinsurance, Right?
So if I have them, you come outand you say it's going to be
$40,000 to fix your foundation.
That's on me.
Bob Brown (30:48):
It typically is.
Now there might be someexceptions.
So the rule is in the industrythat they don't.
They have what they call anearth movement exclusion, which
means they don't cover problemsthat are caused by earth
movement.
But if you can prove that it'sa sudden, catastrophic loss from
like a pipe break or somethinglike that, then you have a
(31:12):
fighting chance and I sayfighting chance because I've
seen it about 50% of the timewhere you can get an engineering
expert to testify that yeah,the pipe broke is what caused
this and therefore insurance isliable.
Blah, blah, blah.
And then you'll have to fightwith the insurance companies
(31:33):
engineers, which again theinsurance companies engineers
are not independent eitherBecause, guess what, they're
protecting the insurance company.
They were hired by theinsurance company, they're going
to protect the insurancecompany.
It's just the way it goes.
George Siegal (31:46):
Yeah, now in Florida too, our wonderful state
legislature just lowered theamount of time you can sue your
builder.
You had 10 years you could goafter them, and they just
reduced that to seven years.
Do you think they were thinkingabout things like foundations
and settling when they weredoing something like that?
Absolutely.
Bob Brown (32:04):
It's almost always the complaints that come from a
builder.
Almost always they're eitherwater proofing problems or
they're foundation problems, anda lot of the water proofing
problems are related tofoundation.
So yeah, they were thinkingabout that and unfortunately,
they were influenced by the homebuilder industry, which has a
(32:25):
significant lobby.
I mean, most of them are tradedon Wall Street.
They got pretty big bucksalmost unlimited bucks and
they're going to lobby hard andso that, but so normally taking
those three years off.
George Siegal (32:38):
There was probably a thought in there like
we'll save a lot of money doingthis.
I don't think they justrandomly chose that.
That's exactly right, wellthat's unfortunately fact of
life, wow, okay.
So then, and I think the otherthing, it's hard to find good
people, and I know you say,don't get out the yellow pages.
So what are the dos and don'tswhen hiring a foundation expert?
Bob Brown (33:00):
Well, We've alluded to one big one already never
hire a foundation repaircontractor to diagnose the
problem.
They're gonna send out who.
They're gonna send out afoundation repair Salesman who
gets a hundred percentcommission.
He doesn't.
They're, they don't typically.
(33:21):
They don't get paid any salaryNot any.
I've never seen it in any ofthem and I know a lot of them
through a lot of differentindustries.
They don't get paid salary atall.
It's all hundred percentcommission.
So if they don't find problems,guess what?
They starve to death or theyget fired.
Find a new job.
So they're, they're Extremelyconflicted to begin with.
(33:45):
And the second reason is theydon't have the training.
I mean to be an engineer, to bea soil engineer or any other
kind of engineer, you need to goto school for five years and
had two years of Training under.
You know, in the, in theindustry from it, from an
engineer, you have to take twovery difficult exams.
So what is a foundation repairsalesman training get?
(34:07):
He might get a couple of daystraining at a, at a, training
put on by the single sourcesupplier on how to sell their
products and how to recognizeproblems, to sell their products
right.
That's, that's primarily whatwhat you get and these guys are
ultra confident.
They puff up their chest andthey say things like oh, I've
been doing this for 30 years.
(34:28):
I'm smarter than engineers, youknow I'm way better than
engineers.
And my response to that is I'veprobably been doing it wrong
for 30 years.
You know, and sure they've.
They've seen a lot of houses,but they just don't understand.
They just don't understand.
You know soil, mechanics andstructural load paths like an
(34:51):
engineer would, and so they'rejust not qualified Much as they,
much as they pretend to saythat they are.
They're not.
I, I had lots of salesmen workfor me and I can tell you and
I've known a lot outside mycompany, that's just the MO that
they have and that and it'sjust.
(35:11):
It's a problem.
You should never, never call afoundation repair company.
Now the problem is you Googleit, guess who comes up?
The foundation repair companies, why they have a lot of money
in the marketing and they'rehelped by their suppliers who
are who are Even more well-knownthan you know they're not just
a company who are even morewealthy and, and I mean like
(35:31):
basement systems, they're a goodcompany.
I like basement systems, I knowthe owner.
They're, they're good guys, butthey have a hundred people in
their internet marketingdivision.
A hundred people How's a littleold engineering firm going to
compete with that, right, it'svery difficult, so you're gonna
find foundation repair companies.
That's just.
That's just all there is to.
You have to dig and search.
I'm in the process of putting adirectory on my website I hope
(35:54):
to have it finished here in amonth or two Of all the forensic
engineers throughout thecountry, because I get that
question asked to me a lot on onsocial media.
Hey, I live in Alabama, I livein Minnesota.
You know, I can't find anybody.
You know, and I try to helppeople as much as I can.
George Siegal (36:10):
So you don't really want to call the repair
company in until you have areport for them to work off of
right.
Bob Brown (36:16):
Right, I mean, think about it, you get.
You get once a foundationrepair salesman who says, oh,
you need 13 peers, and anotherone says, no, you need 14.
And on the other side of thehouse, and the other one says,
no, you need 25.
And so who does the homeownerbelieve?
They believe the guy that isthat they're most comfortable
with, which is what.
The guy that's the bestsalesman and Usually the guy
(36:37):
that's the best salesman isprobably not the best
engineering type.
You know, engineering types aredetail-oriented, they're the
opposite of sales.
And so, uh, listening, you know, to the guy that's the best
sales guy, on which product,which plan is the best plan, is
ridiculous, it doesn't it?
You know homeowners aren'ttrained to understand that.
(36:59):
What?
What you need to do is get anengineer to tell you, oh, you
need 14 piles.
Here's a plan.
Go get three bids from threebidders, from three contractors,
and get it done.
George Siegal (37:11):
Now the homeowner has confidence that, oh yeah,
this is the right plan and it's,it's gonna be supervised and
it's gonna be done right andwould you tell the homeowner
then to hold their ground whenthese guys try to Upsell them
and say oh, they said you needed14.
We think you need 18.
You say I have the report whenyou're doing the bid.
I want you to do what's in thisreport.
(37:33):
That's right.
I want you to fix my house.
Bob Brown (37:35):
That's right.
And, by the way, if you havequalms with what the report says
, go call the engineer.
Don't talk to me, I'm not theexpert.
Go call the engineer.
If you can convince theengineer that you need 18
instead of 14 peers will morepower to you then.
But but don't talk to me aboutit because I'm not an expert.
George Siegal (37:53):
Okay, so in a perfect world, just to wrap this
up, what would you wanthomeowners To be thinking about?
Foundations?
What should be in their mind?
Not not necessarily what you'relooking for in the house, but
how important in the processshould this the health of your
foundation be?
Well all.
Bob Brown (38:12):
I know is it's expensive and a lot of people
have made the claim and I'venever been able to verify it,
but I've got.
A lot of people have made theclaim that more foundations get
damaged from earth movement thanthey do from Hurricanes,
tornadoes and fires combined.
I've never been able to verifythat statistic, but but it
abounds a lot in the foundationindustry.
(38:33):
A lot of people say it.
I have no idea whether it'strue or not, but it could be.
It's a, it's a big problem.
It doesn't make the newsbecause it happens one house at
a time.
George Siegal (38:42):
Yeah, it kind of makes it makes your own news
circle or among all your friendswhen all sudden you find out
you need $50,000 worth offoundation work to sell your
house, right.
Bob Brown (38:52):
And here's the problem that homeowners face.
There they're faced with okay,well, I can get a free Report
done by a foundation repaircompany, or I have to spend a
thousand dollars with anengineer.
I think I'm gonna save thethousand dollars.
Well, that's a.
That's a mistake, becauseyou're gonna pay way more than a
thousand in art, upsellscharges and Other problems.
(39:15):
And guess what, five years downand down the road you might
have another problem like Okay,the foundation repair industry,
we give a lifetime warranty forour peers, right, that ought to
make you feel really good, right?
Yeah, yeah, it makes me feelreally good.
Well, and five years later youcall up and you say, hey, my
house has got all these cracksand you know they still got
problems.
So then they send out one oftheir really educated guys and
(39:39):
he says, oh well, yeah, this isfrom heave.
And it says right here in ourcontract that our peers can't
fix heave and our contractExcludes it.
So well, have a nice life, youknow.
And the homeowner says wait,wait, if it was heave, then you
guys probably diagnosed it wrong.
You know, you shouldn't haveput in the peers in the first
place.
And then the contractor says,hey, what do we know we're just
(40:03):
dumb contractors, we're notengineers.
You know, and and this is theproblem you face when you hire a
contractor that To give you aplan that hasn't been engineered
.
Now most Contractors will tellyou oh, don't worry about it,
when we get permits, we're gonnaget, we're gonna get, you know,
engineering done.
Well, guess what?
That is not engineering.
(40:23):
That tells you, uh, that thatthis is what the problem is and
this is the solution.
You only, you only thinkengineering that the city's
require is a spacing calculation.
They don't want this pier spacetoo far apart so that the house
will sink between the piers.
That's the only thing the cityrequires, and most contractors
(40:45):
are smart enough to know thatthat's gonna be six or eight
feet, depending on whether youhave snow loads or not, and
that's kind of the standard inthe industry for most
foundations.
So it's kind of a dumb thingthat that's the only thing they
require, because it's kind ofintuitive.
But the most important thingnobody asks for, and that is
what was the problem and what'sthe solution?
Nobody, nobody asked that upfront to get permits.
(41:07):
And so when you get a permit,they're not gonna discuss that
problem, they're not going andthey're not going to.
They're not going to address itat all.
So this, this promise of oh,we're gonna get engineering is a
false promise to make you feelgood but does nothing to help
solve the problem.
George Siegal (41:24):
And should I be worried when a seller is fixing
it because they're gonna takethe lowest bid and try to save
as much money?
Bob Brown (41:30):
They may not I mean, nobody's gonna care as much
about as the person who's buyingthe house but they might be too
late and and I see this a lot,I see this oh well, the seller
went out and got his contractorand the buyer went and got their
contractor.
There's a huge difference.
Oh, now what?
Right again, it should go to anengineer.
(41:51):
The engineer will decide.
The engineer might just decidehey, all you need to do is fix
your drainage.
That's all you need.
You know, and maybe themajority of time that might be
the only thing that you have todo.
But at the end you get theengineer stamp and if you're a
buyer and you're looking for thesellers, oh, we had work done.
(42:14):
Well, guess what?
I wanna see the engineeringplan.
I wanna see the sealed stamp bythe engineer who investigated
the problem, not the one whopulled the permits, the one who
investigated the problem.
Oh, and, by the way, he shouldbe the special inspector that
goes over and ensures the jobwas done per his requirements
and that he puts his seal on theend of it that says yeah, this
(42:35):
was done properly per my plan.
Now the buyer has a total,total confidence that it's done
right.
And guess what?
Engineers are regulated bytheir state boards, so if they
screw up, you can hold themaccountable.
Guess what?
The foundation repaircontractor, sales guys.
Who holds them accountable?
(42:55):
Nobody.
They could tell you the moon ismade of green cheese and nobody
cares.
George Siegal (43:02):
Engineers-.
Bob Brown (43:03):
And they might not be in business.
George Siegal (43:04):
They might not be in business by the time.
You have to go out after them.
Bob Brown (43:07):
It might not, but the fact of the matter is it's
difficult anyway.
It's like going after a homebuilder.
It's very difficult.
I know I was on the other endof it.
It's hard to win those suits.
George Siegal (43:21):
Do all foundation repairs have to be permitted?
So you should ask if that youshould.
They should have a record ofthat it should be permitted.
Bob Brown (43:28):
Some states don't require it and it's a shame.
But it's kind of interesting.
Both coasts East and West coastpermitting is always required.
You know you would be in deepdoo-doo if you did it without a
permit.
You get to the middle of thecountry North Dakota, omaha,
(43:51):
iowa they don't require permits.
You can just go do it In Texas.
You don't even have to have acontractor's license to do
contracting work or foundationrepairs.
You can.
Anybody can just go do it Now.
George Siegal (44:03):
I will say Texas I know I love Texas, but that
scares the hell out of me,Cause-.
Bob Brown (44:06):
Yeah, it's crazy, I mean it's, you know, it's the
while, while West there in Texasthey do.
A lot of cities in Texas, totheir credit, do require an
engineering report and some ofthem require a full report that
investigates the cause.
Not very many, but some of themdo Because it's such a problem
(44:27):
there They've the cities havelearned to kind of deal with it.
But most places around thecenter of the country do not
require permits.
In Arizona even they didn'trequire it for a long time and
now it's finally getting aroundto the point where it's required
, and sometimes it still happenswithout permits.
But I would say 90% of the workis now permitted.
George Siegal (44:49):
Why do you think that is?
Do people just not care enough?
I mean, if you're buying ahouse, that's your biggest
investment I would think youwould want to know everything,
but most people don't.
Bob Brown (45:00):
Well, again, it comes to the sales guy.
If the sales guy is reallyconfident, you know he says oh,
you don't need permits for this,we do it all the time without
permits.
It's a nonpermanable kind ofthing and besides it's gonna
delay your project, it's gonnacost you more money.
We can get this done right awayand be a lot cheaper and we're
gonna do a good job anyway.
That's what the sales guy saysto the homeowner and a lot of
(45:25):
them buy it.
George Siegal (45:27):
Yeah, I think we're all stupid Because we hear
what we want to hear, we wantthe path of least resistance,
but then when things go wrongand we got screwed, then we want
to blame somebody and peoplereally blame themselves.
Bob Brown (45:39):
That's right.
Yeah, after the fact you gotproblems then you become very
angry, but you kind of did it toyourself.
George Siegal (45:49):
Well, listen.
Hey, bob, you're so passionateabout this, I can tell it.
It shows that you love what youdo, and I wish you luck with
the book and everything thatyou're doing.
Thank you so much for coming ontoday.
Hey, I'm happy to be here.
It was a lot of fun.
If you have a story about yourhouse good or bad I'd like to
hear from you.
There's a contact form in theshow notes.
Fill it out and send it my way.
(46:10):
You might be a guest on anupcoming episode.
Thanks for taking the time tolisten today.
I'll see you next time.
Anybody that's ever owned a home will tell you
one problem you don't like tofind is something wrong with
your foundation.
The signs can be cracked ordeteriorating walls, uneven
floors and sticking windows anddoors.
When these things start toreveal themselves, what should
you do about it?
My guest today is Bob Brown.
He's a speaker, patentedinnovator, the foremost
(00:22):
authority on foundation repairdiagnosis and the author of the
book Foundation Repair SecretsLearn how to Protect Yourself
and Save Thousands.
Before you start over-googlingto figure out what's wrong, you
need to hear what Bob has to say.
I'm George Siegal and this isHomeowners Be Aware the podcast
that teaches you everything youneed to know about being a
(00:44):
homeowner.
Bob, thank you so much forjoining me today, happy to be
here Now.
A foundation of a house issomething that most people
probably take for granted and Iimagine it depends on what part
of the country you live in andthe foundation challenges.
So, overall, tell us howimportant.
I mean it sounds obvious justin the name it's the foundation.
(01:05):
How important is that to ahouse?
Bob Brown (01:08):
Well, I mean, if your foundation is not right, the
rest of your house won'tfunction properly.
Your doors and windows won'twork, you'll get cracks in your
walls, you can even get leaks inyour roof.
George Siegal (01:19):
So it's important that your foundation operate
optimally Now when I'm goingaround my neighborhood I live in
Florida, I live in Tampa andyou see them put the base there,
they pound away on it forseveral days, put all the pipes
in and then they pour thefoundation.
Is it done differently indifferent parts of the country?
Tell us what like for each.
I know you can't describe all50 states, but is there a
(01:41):
general way to do it versus anunusual way?
Bob Brown (01:45):
Yes, in the colder climates you're going to see
more crawl spaces and morebasements, and the reason you
see more basements up north isbecause you have a frost depth
and you need to dig down yourfootings for frost depths, and
sometimes that can be quite deep.
It could be three feet or so ormore, and if you're digging
(02:06):
down that far, it's not thatmuch farther to keep digging for
a basement, and so quite oftenyou'll see up north basements
and quite often kind of in themid-range or even up north
you'll see more crawl spacesthan slabs on a grade.
George Siegal (02:26):
Now, here in Florida there's a lot of
elevated houses.
There's houses on stilts.
So what would you consider?
The foundation, the base wherethe ground is, where the pylons
go into the ground, or theelevation where the first floor
starts?
Bob Brown (02:38):
Down in the ground there's a deep foundation system
and can be installed in avariety of ways.
But piles and piers and allkinds of things to go in and
install a deep basement system,or, sorry, a deep foundation
system, and they'll extend upand then they'll have a floor
(03:00):
structure.
So a lot of people get mixed upbetween the floor and the
basement and a lot of especiallywith slabs on grade they think
that the slab is part of thebasement when in fact it's not.
It's the floor slab.
Now, sometimes with apost-tension slab it's kind of
the same thing, but not always.
George Siegal (03:17):
Usually not so just to dumb it down for me
because I get so easily confused.
So the foundation would be thevery bottom level.
Bob Brown (03:27):
Right, that's where the foundation is support the
structural loads.
George Siegal (03:33):
So then, what are we looking at in terms of?
Most people aren't involved inthat part of the process.
You know, even if you're buyingnew construction, they don't
really want you out there untilthey're pretty far along.
Bob Brown (03:44):
So how do you keep?
George Siegal (03:45):
an eye on that.
How do you know if it's beingdone right, you know.
Bob Brown (03:49):
I will tell you that there's probably no way for a
lay person to really knowwhether it's being done right,
except maybe very obvious LikeI've seen like them pouring
concrete right after a realheavy rain and there's mud down
in the footings or something youknow.
But most of the time it getsbuilt properly.
(04:10):
And the foundations.
The reason for foundationproblems is not necessarily the
construction, it's rather thesoil, and the soil is
complicated and unpredictableand over time it changes and
that's what the foundation sitson and it doesn't really matter
that much.
I mean, you could have afoundation made out of solid
(04:33):
titanium and it's still floatingon the soil, right, so it could
still have problems.
George Siegal (04:39):
Now I had an arborist out to my house
recently we have a big grand oakin front of the house and he
was saying that a lot of houses,the trees around it cause
problems for foundations.
How conscious do you have to beof the trees around you?
Bob Brown (04:51):
That's right.
Trees can cause a problem in acouple of different ways.
So one of them is obviously ifthe trees are real close, the
roots can interfere with thefooting, and I've seen roots
break up footings and cause likea peak in the floor slab and
crack walls.
I've seen that happen.
(05:11):
But the other way that peopledon't quite think of a lot is
the fact that in areas where youhave clay soils, clay soils
expand.
They call them expansive soils.
Right, Everybody's heard ofexpansive soils, but they don't
really understand what they mean.
What they mean is if you haveclay soil that's expansive, then
(05:33):
when it gets wet it swells andwhen it gets dry it shrinks up,
and so those changes inequilibrium is what causes the
problems, not necessarily theinitial makeup.
Well, if you've got soil aroundthe house that's in equilibrium
and you've got a giant treesucking out moisture in one part
of the house, those soils aregoing to shrink more than the
(05:53):
others and you're going to causesettlement, and that happens
quite often in areas withexpansive clay soils.
George Siegal (06:00):
Now I follow a number of home inspectors on
Instagram and they show mepictures of.
I saw one recently where theywere pouring the foundation and
there was a big plastic cup thatwas on the ground.
So when the cup was pulled away, there was now an opening in
the foundation.
Now he said, structurallythat's probably not going to
affect it, but is it just giveyou an indication of how sloppy
they might have been when theywere doing the project?
Bob Brown (06:23):
Oh, yeah, I mean, hey , we're dealing with
construction workers that quiteoften make a lot of mistakes,
are not educated properly and,let's face it, you know every
industry has a shortage ofproperly trained people and
construction is really, reallyhaving a struggle right now.
(06:46):
You just can't find people.
I mean, I sold by company lastyear but it was a super
structure.
I mean a super hard thing tojust define guys to you know,
basic guys just to work.
You know we'll train them.
Even then we couldn't find themand we quit.
We quit recruiting from theconstruction industry because
(07:07):
there was just nobody to recruitfrom.
We just wanted to find guysthat wanted to work hard, right
and and trained them ourselves.
George Siegal (07:15):
Now, sometimes you see a foundation poured and
it sits there for a couple ofweeks and then sometimes they
start building on it right away.
Is there a certain cure periodthat's needed to properly let a
foundation take hold?
Bob Brown (07:29):
Well, concrete cures on an asymptotic scale.
It starts out curing veryquickly but it doesn't happen
right away.
It takes 28 days to reach 90,whatever it is 95% of a strength
.
I think it takes seven days toreach two thirds of a strength
and it's only half half strongafter maybe a day or two or
(07:54):
three.
So it does take time forconcrete to to cure up.
However, you know, depending onthe foundation type, they'll go
in and if it's a post-tensionslab, they'll go in and tighten
up the cables and tension thecables.
After, I think, three days andgenerally speaking, you know you
(08:18):
start framing a house.
You know the wood doesn'treally weigh that much, right,
it doesn't.
You don't get a lot of weighton the foundation until they
start putting the roof tiles ontop of the roof, and you'll see
them do that.
They'll get the house singlesshingles and they'll just set
them up there.
They won't necessarily lay themout, they'll just set them up
(08:40):
there and that's to weight thehouse and it's a lot of weight
and they want it to kind of moveand settle, because all homes
settle during construction,right, and they settle the most
when you put that weight up onthe roof.
And so most of the time they'llget that up there and they'll
put the put the tiles on, andthen they'll wait for it to have
a little bit of settlement acouple of weeks or something
(09:02):
like that and then they'll dothe drywall, because if they
don't, then the drywall startscracking right away and then
they have to fix it right.
So that's not a that's not agood plan.
George Siegal (09:11):
Now, does it make a difference if it's a block
house, cause a lot of the houseshere are first floor block and
then, and quite often, well, notenough, but a lot of them are
second floor block also.
Bob Brown (09:21):
Block is quite a bit heavier than wood.
So yeah, you might, you mighthave a little longer waiting
period for block, that's, that'strue.
I didn't think about that.
But and typically when you putthe block in, the block's not
that heavy.
Well, it is heavy, but what'sheavier is the grouting of the
cells with concrete and rebar inthere.
That that contributes a lot ofweight and it's not just a
(09:43):
little bit.
I mean it should be.
You know every, you know it'snot just a little bit of a
grouting 32 to 40 inches oncenter vertically and then
horizontally every four feet tohave what they call a bond beam
and all that concrete ways whenyou start putting it in the in
the cells.
George Siegal (10:00):
So if I'm buying an existing house, do I want a
foundation inspection, or shouldmy home inspector be able to
see the signs of a foundationthat has problems?
Bob Brown (10:13):
I do the training for the American Society of Home
Inspectors here in Phoenix Ashy,they call it right and I mean
I'll train them to know what tolook for, but they don't really
have the skills.
They don't really have theskills to like diagnose whether
(10:38):
it's heave or settlement, orwhether you need peers or how
bad it is.
That really should require anengineer and, by the way, should
never be done by a foundationrepair contractor, even though
they do it more than anybodyelse.
We'll talk about that when youget the chance but should be
done by a licensed professionalengineer.
Now the problem with real estatetransactions is that you have a
(11:01):
10 day inspection window andthe home inspector goes in and
they might see a problem, right.
Well, then they get the reportand they turn it in like two
days before the end of thewindow an inspection window and
so then in a panic, the realtorreaches out to try to find
somebody and the first thingthey do is they Google and who
(11:23):
comes up?
The foundation repair companies.
They call a foundation repaircompany and it's like, hey, can
you give me a report in two days?
You know well, I mean afoundation repair contractor
will go out there and give anestimate, maybe in two days, but
that's not really a foundationinvestigation and there's no way
an engineer can get it done intwo days.
It's just physically impossible.
(11:43):
Might be able to get it done in10 days if they're really have
nothing on their backlog andthey can really do it fast.
But I encourage most realtorsto put a clause in their
contract that says hey, if afoundation problem is identified
, then we need another 10 daywindow to get an expert in here
(12:08):
to give us an assessment.
And what usually happens,unfortunately, is the they call
a foundation repair contractorwho wants to sell a big job and
he shows up and says, hey, youneed $80,000 in peers.
Well, guess what happens to thelisting?
The whole thing blows up andeverybody goes their separate
ways.
Right, that's what usuallyhappens.
George Siegal (12:29):
Now you know, there's so many things that when
you're buying a house that youhave to think about and I can
honestly say that in all thehouses that I've bought I've
never had to or thought ofbringing in a foundation person.
I've usually just relied on theinspector calling something out
as an alert.
Now, the way you're explainingthis it sounds like that's a
missing link, much like I thinka lot of people need to maybe
(12:51):
bring an insurance agent withthem to find out if the house is
insurable.
You know, there's things wejust miss that we end up paying
for later.
Bob Brown (13:01):
Right, yeah, and you might.
You might not have to, like,bring the insurance guy out, but
you can check it for claims,right, they can do that online.
It's a little more difficult.
For foundation inspection, youreally need to have eyes on it,
right, you need to, you know, doa full inspection, and it needs
to be done really by a licensedprofessional engineer and not
(13:26):
just any old engineer.
By the way, it needs to be aforensic.
I prefer a geotechnical engineer, and the reason I prefer a
geotechnical is because astructure everybody calls a
structural engineer really thewrong guy to call, and the
reason is is because they'llcall him out and he'll say, oh
okay, there's no structuraldeficiencies.
Okay, well, could it become astructural deficiency?
(13:50):
Oh yeah, if it keeps moving, itcould be a structural
deficiency.
Well, is it going to quit?
Is it going to keep moving?
Well, you need to call ageotechnical engineer because
it's a soil problem.
So you just wasted all yourtime and effort calling a
structural engineer when youshould have just called a
geotech in the first place, aforensic geotech, not a regular
geotech.
(14:10):
Most engineers work in newconstruction and they work in
things like infrastructure,freeways, dams, sewer systems,
water systems.
You know all those kinds ofthings, maybe new buildings
right, and very few work inresidential.
Even fewer do forensic work,and those are the guys you need
(14:32):
to call out.
George Siegal (14:33):
So what are we looking at?
Cost wise for that?
Because you know, most peoplebitch if they're going to pay
$400 or $500 for an inspection.
Then they're told well, maybeyou need to get a termite
inspection now you got to get anAC guy out here.
So where do you fit into theequation?
Well, I don't.
I'm not a.
What you're talking about,though I'm not saying I'm not
expecting you to show up in myhouse.
Bob Brown (14:52):
You sold your business, but yeah Well and I
had a forensic engineeringbusiness and a foundation repair
business, so I understand bothparts of it.
And you're right.
I mean that is a problem for abuyer right, because a lot of
engineers will charge $3,000.
Now I'm trying to build a groupof engineers and give them the
(15:12):
tools to be able to produce itfor less than a thousand.
But that's a bit of work, I getit, but that's my mission in
life.
I'm trying to help the publicby giving engineers tools to
make them more efficient so thatthey can compete with free,
which is what you get with thefoundation repair company.
George Siegal (15:33):
Yeah, I just don't.
I can't get my head aroundseeing how anybody buying a
house especially if it's in that$500,000 to a million or
whatever.
Nobody's going to pay for that.
Bob Brown (15:47):
And I totally agree and it's a problem.
It really should be on thelisting, on the selling agent's
end, to be proactive, to knowgood experts and to bring them
in before they even list thehouse and say do an inspection,
give us a clean bill of health,or else tell us what needs to be
(16:08):
done and then supervise it andinspect it so that you can give
us a clean bill of health whenit's done.
And that's the way it should bedone.
And a lot of times what happensinstead is they call the
foundation repair company whogives them a giant bill to
repair the foundation.
Everybody goes their separateways the seller fires the
(16:33):
listing agent, does cosmeticrepairs, hides it, finds a new
listing agent and puts it up forsale, and then, if it's a
continuing problem, somebodyfinds out about it three years
down the road.
Right, that's what happens mostof the time.
George Siegal (16:52):
Yeah, disclosure laws are so weak in so many
jurisdictions around the countrythat it's like playing hot
potatoes.
So it almost seems like thatshould be something that, if
you're looking at a house, maybeyou insist that the homeowner
stand behind the foundation,because that shouldn't be your
problem If they're living on adecaying property, it shouldn't
become your problem.
Bob Brown (17:13):
And it's like, as we talked about, it's very
difficult for a.
I mean, think about it A guythat's interested in the house,
not even sure he's gonna buy itright, is gonna spend a grand
checking it out when he mightnot even buy it.
I mean it's not very tenable.
My hope is that someday that afoundation inspection with
(17:38):
Topolines and the history andthe damage maps and all the
things that are required in aproper report be done on every
transaction or prior to, withina certain amount of time prior
to, so that there's a record ofthe history, some of like a,
like a Carfax, yeah, like Carfax, yeah, something like that, so
(18:00):
that it's transparent andeverybody knows what they're
getting into.
George Siegal (18:06):
Absolutely.
I think every house should betagged by that and I know that's
unfortunate for somebody who'sgot a problem house, but that's
like a store selling somethingwith a stain on it and they just
hide it.
It shouldn't become the buyer'sproblem and we just kick it
down the road, and it just seemsto happen way too often.
I know here in Florida we alsohave sinkholes.
(18:27):
I would imagine that there's nofoundation that's gonna save
you from that, is there?
Bob Brown (18:32):
Nope, you got a sinkhole the whole house will
fall in, or a part of it, orwhatever.
Yeah, there's no stop.
George Siegal (18:39):
Yeah, you can't even get an insurance, isn't
paying for it.
They've now realized-.
Bob Brown (18:43):
They used to in Florida, but they quit doing it.
George Siegal (18:46):
Yeah, like a lot of things they've quit doing
here but they've probably gonehey, that's a money loser, let's
stop paying for that.
It's exactly right, yep.
So I just see it as a realchallenge.
I mean, I see the importance ofit.
It's just like getting ageological study of your
property.
I think it's easier when it's abrand new house, because the
builder, at least for a certainperiod of time, has to stand
behind that foundation.
(19:06):
So once I have the house andit's in my possession, what
should I be looking for?
Or even if I'm looking at ahouse and haven't bought it yet,
so make me my own little juniorfoundation expert here what are
some things I can look for?
Bob Brown (19:18):
Well, observationally , you're gonna notice if you've
got foundation problems, you'regonna notice cracks in your
walls, typically interior walls,exterior walls maybe, but
exterior is not climate control.
That can crack for a lot ofreason.
Now, block stair step cracks,you'll see, and that's pretty
obvious.
But stucco over wood framecracks for a lot of reasons.
(19:40):
Interior drywall yeah, you'llnotice it right away.
Doors and windows that are outof square, kind of pinched,
maybe a larger gap on one sideof the door and pinched on the
other side, it doesn't operatevery good.
Man Windows, same thing, right,sloped floors.
Those are the things thatyou're gonna notice.
George Siegal (20:00):
Now do you see, in areas where gosh in Arizona,
you have it probably with a longperiod where you go without
rain, but what about areas wherethey have flooding and they
have water problems?
That probably causes a wholedifferent set of issues for
foundations.
Bob Brown (20:16):
It might, but the bigger problem is expansive
soils, and some areas have themand some areas don't.
And expansive soils arecyclical.
They may go up and down and upand down, and all that moving
eventually causes problems.
Now, if you have an area withgiant flooding, that's gonna be
obvious.
You could have scouring, youcould have water that goes into
(20:40):
down to layers where there areexpansive soils that maybe
typically don't get wet right,so you can have those kinds of
problems as well.
Moisture is always the catalyst, always is, and changes in
moisture is what causes theproblems, not necessarily
moisture.
So if you're under a constantflood all the time, if you're
wet all the time, likeLouisiana's, wet all the time,
(21:02):
well it's gonna be what it'sgonna be.
But like Texas, on the otherhand, texas you have dry seasons
and you have wet seasons andyou've got expansive soil.
That's why there's so manyfoundation contractors and so
many counties and problems inTexas because of that
combination.
George Siegal (21:20):
Now I've had home inspectors tell me that you
need to really watch the gradingaround your foundation.
You wanna make sure that'ssloping away from it, not
towards it.
How, on top of that, do peopleneed to be Super on top?
Bob Brown (21:34):
of it.
I mean most of the time whenyou get a report from an
engineer.
Almost every report says fixthe grading and drainage and
then nobody does it right andthen they wonder why they have
problems.
So it really is important andquite often on modern houses
there's no way to make surfacegrading work.
(21:56):
I mean you're supposed to slopesix inches over 10 feet.
Well, you got a five foot sideyard.
How's that work?
Well, then you have to providetheoretically, by code anyway.
Slope a certain slope, 2% slopeout to the street.
Well, there's no elevationdifference between the house and
the street to get enough waterto go out there.
(22:18):
So really, the only way toreally make it work is to put
gutters with hard pipe drainageto get the water 20 feet away
from the house.
And almost no builder does thatright.
Well, I don't know any buildersthat do it, unless it's a
custom home.
But those are the things youneed to do.
You'll get that recommendationalmost all the time from
(22:39):
engineers and I'll just say tothe short work just do it now
and wait for the engineer right,true, and I bet a lot of
builders just put that into theground, but it doesn't go
anywhere, just to make it looklike.
Well, I've seen some boneheadedthings like they put gutters and
the hard pipes are perforatedso it just ejects all the water
(23:00):
right out of the house.
That's the worst thing youcould do and I've seen that
happen.
George Siegal (23:04):
Yeah, another thing.
I bet a lot of people learnthis the hard way.
If you have a tile roof and youhave gutters and it's raining,
the gutters are really worthlessat that point because the water
just comes shooting off theroof and lands all over your
yard anyway.
Bob Brown (23:17):
Well, we have a lot of tile roofs in Arizona and so
the gutter companies havelearned to put bigger gutters on
.
They catch us most of that, butit is a challenge, and
especially at the corners andyou can put up a little higher,
like you know corner thing thatcatch extra water, where the
water comes down in a hurry.
Right, there's things you cando.
(23:37):
You're never gonna catch it all, right, I mean, it's impossible
.
You can't catch all the watercoming out of the sky right next
to the house.
So how does that work?
You know the goal is, you know,get as much as you can, right.
George Siegal (23:50):
So when you're at a party, do people come up to
you and say are you the dirtwhisperer?
Bob Brown (23:55):
I've had a lot of people ask me, that's for sure.
George Siegal (23:59):
What's it like having a title like that?
I think it's kind of cool tohave a title.
Bob Brown (24:03):
I like it.
You know it's interesting, it'sfun and you know dirt is an
interesting subject.
I mean.
A lot of people think that, youknow, dirt is just one
homogeneous, massive brownunderneath the house.
It's not that way at all.
Dirt gets deposited in layersand every layer is a little bit
(24:23):
different more different density, different mineral content,
different affinities for water.
You know lots of differentthings, and in each of those
layers they're not exactlyparallel.
They all kind of, you know theywere deposited by nature,
organically, right, and so somemay be high, some may be low,
and the builder may have cutinto a few while he was, you
(24:46):
know, or piled on top.
Dirt can be really, reallycomplicated, which is why you
have geotechnical engineers,right.
George Siegal (24:55):
Yeah, you know, years ago a buddy of mine, good
friend of mine, kept me waitingin a bar two hours while he was
late and when he showed up hegoes.
I was with the dirt man.
He was a construction guy andat the time I rolled my eyes
like the dirt man.
I think it could be prettyfascinating hanging out with the
dirt man now.
Bob Brown (25:11):
Yeah, lots of fun things with soil.
I do a lot of hiking with thegeotechnical engineer and you
know we're always talking aboutthis natural process and rocks
and look at this one and allkinds of stuff you know.
George Siegal (25:23):
Yeah, no, no.
I love that stuff now.
I wish I wish I cared moreabout it when I was younger.
Now tell me about the book.
Bob Brown (25:29):
So I wrote the book.
Well, it's taken me about fiveyears to write it, but it was
essentially started with thegenesis of a lot of just a lot
of blogs that I blogged about,and then I eventually took all
those and put them in order andcreated a book.
But it's been a lot of fun.
(25:50):
I'm considering another book atthis point, a follow on book,
but the book basically has twopremises.
Number one, why you should nevercall a foundation repair
company to get diagnosis.
You can call them for repairs.
They're good at that.
And then the second part of itis people forget about expensive
(26:11):
soils and particularly in heave.
They don't understand whatheave is, and so I wanted to
show that there was a solutionfor heave.
Now the reason that's importantis because the traditional
foundation repair industry sellsthese piling products and they
ignore heave because they don'thave a solution for it.
So they don't train their salesguys.
(26:32):
They don't do anything aboutheave because you know they
don't want to go home hungry andit just confuses things.
They don't have the training toreally understand it very well.
So I wanted to show that thereare tools for it and it can be
addressed.
George Siegal (26:51):
There's a couple of things I wanted to touch on
in our remaining time, justbecause I think it's some things
that could help people the most, and we might have covered a
few of these already.
Five red flags that meanfoundation issues to look out
for when buying a new home.
The five red flags.
Bob Brown (27:07):
Well, we sort of discussed them already Cracks in
walls, sloping floors, babycracks in floors Although floors
crack for a lot of reasonsDoors and windows out of square,
and being aware of the geologyof where you're at, what the
(27:28):
soils are like and you can goonto the NCRS website and kind
of get an idea about what thesoils are in your particular
neighborhood.
They usually print maps andthose kinds of things for people
to understand, and so those arethe key things that you should
be aware of at least whenwalking through the house.
And I've had realtors saythings like oh Jay, don't worry
(27:51):
about that door, that won't open, or the crack right next to it.
Those are just cosmetic andwe're going to get that fixed.
I can't believe a realtor wouldever say that, but they have.
George Siegal (28:01):
And that's kind of why I asked you the question
again, because I've heard thatfrom them.
I've heard them.
They look at you and go oh,that's just normal settling.
Bob Brown (28:08):
Yeah, what should I think when I hear that you
should think oh boy, you areopining and leaving yourself
open for a giant lawsuit,because realtors should never
opine on the characterization ofanything foundation related.
George Siegal (28:22):
Yeah, and it wasn't the.
It wasn't the realtor, it wasactually a builder that said
that to me.
I go why is that doing that?
That's just normal settling.
Bob Brown (28:31):
Well, builders are almost as bad as foundation
repair companies.
So you know they have a here inArizona.
They have a 10 year, oractually an eight year, statute
of limitations and if youdiscover it the eighth year, you
get a ninth year.
So during that period of time,if you make enough noise, well,
(28:53):
first, if you complain to thebuilder, he'll send out, you
know, a rep.
You know who will come out andtell you that it's nothing, that
is normal, and then, if itkeeps happening, they'll send
out.
You know, if it's bad enough,they'll send out a drywall guy
to patch all the cracks.
And then, if it keeps happening, he'll just keep doing that,
keep sending out the drywall guy, and eventually you know you're
(29:15):
either going to run out of gasor you're going to lose interest
, or, if you complain hardenough, he'll send out his
engineer.
Well, the problem is it's thesame engineer that designed the
house.
So what's the?
You know it's not like he'sgoing to say, oh yeah, we
screwed up.
He's not going to do that.
(29:36):
He's going to protect thebuilder because that's who his
client is right, and so he's notreally a, he's not really an
independent engineer, he'sbiased, and so you shouldn't
really trust anything they say.
To be honest with you.
George Siegal (29:54):
That's true.
So the places I've inevitablyseen cracks are in like crown
molding.
Is that from foundationproblems?
It can be.
Bob Brown (30:05):
Sometimes you'll see a gap underneath the floor and
that's, you know when the flooris dropping.
Or if you see, like the crownmolding, where it kind of
wobbles back and forth, you knowthat's from the floor pushing
on it.
You know what we call crammingcramming the baseboard and that
is from the floor pushing upward.
And that can be either from thesettling going the footing
(30:27):
going down settling, or from thefloor heating up from expansive
soils could be either one.
George Siegal (30:34):
Now, when you have problems with a foundation,
can anything be fixed?
Or is it usually not covered byinsurance, Right?
So if I have them, you come outand you say it's going to be
$40,000 to fix your foundation.
That's on me.
Bob Brown (30:48):
It typically is.
Now there might be someexceptions.
So the rule is in the industrythat they don't.
They have what they call anearth movement exclusion, which
means they don't cover problemsthat are caused by earth
movement.
But if you can prove that it'sa sudden, catastrophic loss from
like a pipe break or somethinglike that, then you have a
(31:12):
fighting chance and I sayfighting chance because I've
seen it about 50% of the timewhere you can get an engineering
expert to testify that yeah,the pipe broke is what caused
this and therefore insurance isliable.
Blah, blah, blah.
And then you'll have to fightwith the insurance companies
(31:33):
engineers, which again theinsurance companies engineers
are not independent eitherBecause, guess what, they're
protecting the insurance company.
They were hired by theinsurance company, they're going
to protect the insurancecompany.
It's just the way it goes.
George Siegal (31:46):
Yeah, now in Florida too, our wonderful state
legislature just lowered theamount of time you can sue your
builder.
You had 10 years you could goafter them, and they just
reduced that to seven years.
Do you think they were thinkingabout things like foundations
and settling when they weredoing something like that?
Absolutely.
Bob Brown (32:04):
It's almost always the complaints that come from a
builder.
Almost always they're eitherwater proofing problems or
they're foundation problems, anda lot of the water proofing
problems are related tofoundation.
So yeah, they were thinkingabout that and unfortunately,
they were influenced by the homebuilder industry, which has a
(32:25):
significant lobby.
I mean, most of them are tradedon Wall Street.
They got pretty big bucksalmost unlimited bucks and
they're going to lobby hard andso that, but so normally taking
those three years off.
George Siegal (32:38):
There was probably a thought in there like
we'll save a lot of money doingthis.
I don't think they justrandomly chose that.
That's exactly right, wellthat's unfortunately fact of
life, wow, okay.
So then, and I think the otherthing, it's hard to find good
people, and I know you say,don't get out the yellow pages.
So what are the dos and don'tswhen hiring a foundation expert?
Bob Brown (33:00):
Well, We've alluded to one big one already never
hire a foundation repaircontractor to diagnose the
problem.
They're gonna send out who.
They're gonna send out afoundation repair Salesman who
gets a hundred percentcommission.
He doesn't.
They're, they don't typically.
(33:21):
They don't get paid any salaryNot any.
I've never seen it in any ofthem and I know a lot of them
through a lot of differentindustries.
They don't get paid salary atall.
It's all hundred percentcommission.
So if they don't find problems,guess what?
They starve to death or theyget fired.
Find a new job.
So they're, they're Extremelyconflicted to begin with.
(33:45):
And the second reason is theydon't have the training.
I mean to be an engineer, to bea soil engineer or any other
kind of engineer, you need to goto school for five years and
had two years of Training under.
You know, in the, in theindustry from it, from an
engineer, you have to take twovery difficult exams.
So what is a foundation repairsalesman training get?
(34:07):
He might get a couple of daystraining at a, at a, training
put on by the single sourcesupplier on how to sell their
products and how to recognizeproblems, to sell their products
right.
That's, that's primarily whatwhat you get and these guys are
ultra confident.
They puff up their chest andthey say things like oh, I've
been doing this for 30 years.
(34:28):
I'm smarter than engineers, youknow I'm way better than
engineers.
And my response to that is I'veprobably been doing it wrong
for 30 years.
You know, and sure they've.
They've seen a lot of houses,but they just don't understand.
They just don't understand.
You know soil, mechanics andstructural load paths like an
(34:51):
engineer would, and so they'rejust not qualified Much as they,
much as they pretend to saythat they are.
They're not.
I, I had lots of salesmen workfor me and I can tell you and
I've known a lot outside mycompany, that's just the MO that
they have and that and it'sjust.
(35:11):
It's a problem.
You should never, never call afoundation repair company.
Now the problem is you Googleit, guess who comes up?
The foundation repair companies, why they have a lot of money
in the marketing and they'rehelped by their suppliers who
are who are Even more well-knownthan you know they're not just
a company who are even morewealthy and, and I mean like
(35:31):
basement systems, they're a goodcompany.
I like basement systems, I knowthe owner.
They're, they're good guys, butthey have a hundred people in
their internet marketingdivision.
A hundred people How's a littleold engineering firm going to
compete with that, right, it'svery difficult, so you're gonna
find foundation repair companies.
That's just.
That's just all there is to.
You have to dig and search.
I'm in the process of putting adirectory on my website I hope
(35:54):
to have it finished here in amonth or two Of all the forensic
engineers throughout thecountry, because I get that
question asked to me a lot on onsocial media.
Hey, I live in Alabama, I livein Minnesota.
You know, I can't find anybody.
You know, and I try to helppeople as much as I can.
George Siegal (36:10):
So you don't really want to call the repair
company in until you have areport for them to work off of
right.
Bob Brown (36:16):
Right, I mean, think about it, you get.
You get once a foundationrepair salesman who says, oh,
you need 13 peers, and anotherone says, no, you need 14.
And on the other side of thehouse, and the other one says,
no, you need 25.
And so who does the homeownerbelieve?
They believe the guy that isthat they're most comfortable
with, which is what.
The guy that's the bestsalesman and Usually the guy
(36:37):
that's the best salesman isprobably not the best
engineering type.
You know, engineering types aredetail-oriented, they're the
opposite of sales.
And so, uh, listening, you know, to the guy that's the best
sales guy, on which product,which plan is the best plan, is
ridiculous, it doesn't it?
You know homeowners aren'ttrained to understand that.
(36:59):
What?
What you need to do is get anengineer to tell you, oh, you
need 14 piles.
Here's a plan.
Go get three bids from threebidders, from three contractors,
and get it done.
George Siegal (37:11):
Now the homeowner has confidence that, oh yeah,
this is the right plan and it's,it's gonna be supervised and
it's gonna be done right andwould you tell the homeowner
then to hold their ground whenthese guys try to Upsell them
and say oh, they said you needed14.
We think you need 18.
You say I have the report whenyou're doing the bid.
I want you to do what's in thisreport.
(37:33):
That's right.
I want you to fix my house.
Bob Brown (37:35):
That's right.
And, by the way, if you havequalms with what the report says
, go call the engineer.
Don't talk to me, I'm not theexpert.
Go call the engineer.
If you can convince theengineer that you need 18
instead of 14 peers will morepower to you then.
But but don't talk to me aboutit because I'm not an expert.
George Siegal (37:53):
Okay, so in a perfect world, just to wrap this
up, what would you wanthomeowners To be thinking about?
Foundations?
What should be in their mind?
Not not necessarily what you'relooking for in the house, but
how important in the processshould this the health of your
foundation be?
Well all.
Bob Brown (38:12):
I know is it's expensive and a lot of people
have made the claim and I'venever been able to verify it,
but I've got.
A lot of people have made theclaim that more foundations get
damaged from earth movement thanthey do from Hurricanes,
tornadoes and fires combined.
I've never been able to verifythat statistic, but but it
abounds a lot in the foundationindustry.
(38:33):
A lot of people say it.
I have no idea whether it'strue or not, but it could be.
It's a, it's a big problem.
It doesn't make the newsbecause it happens one house at
a time.
George Siegal (38:42):
Yeah, it kind of makes it makes your own news
circle or among all your friendswhen all sudden you find out
you need $50,000 worth offoundation work to sell your
house, right.
Bob Brown (38:52):
And here's the problem that homeowners face.
There they're faced with okay,well, I can get a free Report
done by a foundation repaircompany, or I have to spend a
thousand dollars with anengineer.
I think I'm gonna save thethousand dollars.
Well, that's a.
That's a mistake, becauseyou're gonna pay way more than a
thousand in art, upsellscharges and Other problems.
(39:15):
And guess what, five years downand down the road you might
have another problem like Okay,the foundation repair industry,
we give a lifetime warranty forour peers, right, that ought to
make you feel really good, right?
Yeah, yeah, it makes me feelreally good.
Well, and five years later youcall up and you say, hey, my
house has got all these cracksand you know they still got
problems.
So then they send out one oftheir really educated guys and
(39:39):
he says, oh well, yeah, this isfrom heave.
And it says right here in ourcontract that our peers can't
fix heave and our contractExcludes it.
So well, have a nice life, youknow.
And the homeowner says wait,wait, if it was heave, then you
guys probably diagnosed it wrong.
You know, you shouldn't haveput in the peers in the first
place.
And then the contractor says,hey, what do we know we're just
(40:03):
dumb contractors, we're notengineers.
You know, and and this is theproblem you face when you hire a
contractor that To give you aplan that hasn't been engineered
.
Now most Contractors will tellyou oh, don't worry about it,
when we get permits, we're gonnaget, we're gonna get, you know,
engineering done.
Well, guess what?
That is not engineering.
(40:23):
That tells you, uh, that thatthis is what the problem is and
this is the solution.
You only, you only thinkengineering that the city's
require is a spacing calculation.
They don't want this pier spacetoo far apart so that the house
will sink between the piers.
That's the only thing the cityrequires, and most contractors
(40:45):
are smart enough to know thatthat's gonna be six or eight
feet, depending on whether youhave snow loads or not, and
that's kind of the standard inthe industry for most
foundations.
So it's kind of a dumb thingthat that's the only thing they
require, because it's kind ofintuitive.
But the most important thingnobody asks for, and that is
what was the problem and what'sthe solution?
Nobody, nobody asked that upfront to get permits.
(41:07):
And so when you get a permit,they're not gonna discuss that
problem, they're not going andthey're not going to.
They're not going to address itat all.
So this, this promise of oh,we're gonna get engineering is a
false promise to make you feelgood but does nothing to help
solve the problem.
George Siegal (41:24):
And should I be worried when a seller is fixing
it because they're gonna takethe lowest bid and try to save
as much money?
Bob Brown (41:30):
They may not I mean, nobody's gonna care as much
about as the person who's buyingthe house but they might be too
late and and I see this a lot,I see this oh well, the seller
went out and got his contractorand the buyer went and got their
contractor.
There's a huge difference.
Oh, now what?
Right again, it should go to anengineer.
(41:51):
The engineer will decide.
The engineer might just decidehey, all you need to do is fix
your drainage.
That's all you need.
You know, and maybe themajority of time that might be
the only thing that you have todo.
But at the end you get theengineer stamp and if you're a
buyer and you're looking for thesellers, oh, we had work done.
(42:14):
Well, guess what?
I wanna see the engineeringplan.
I wanna see the sealed stamp bythe engineer who investigated
the problem, not the one whopulled the permits, the one who
investigated the problem.
Oh, and, by the way, he shouldbe the special inspector that
goes over and ensures the jobwas done per his requirements
and that he puts his seal on theend of it that says yeah, this
(42:35):
was done properly per my plan.
Now the buyer has a total,total confidence that it's done
right.
And guess what?
Engineers are regulated bytheir state boards, so if they
screw up, you can hold themaccountable.
Guess what?
The foundation repaircontractor, sales guys.
Who holds them accountable?
(42:55):
Nobody.
They could tell you the moon ismade of green cheese and nobody
cares.
George Siegal (43:02):
Engineers-.
Bob Brown (43:03):
And they might not be in business.
George Siegal (43:04):
They might not be in business by the time.
You have to go out after them.
Bob Brown (43:07):
It might not, but the fact of the matter is it's
difficult anyway.
It's like going after a homebuilder.
It's very difficult.
I know I was on the other endof it.
It's hard to win those suits.
George Siegal (43:21):
Do all foundation repairs have to be permitted?
So you should ask if that youshould.
They should have a record ofthat it should be permitted.
Bob Brown (43:28):
Some states don't require it and it's a shame.
But it's kind of interesting.
Both coasts East and West coastpermitting is always required.
You know you would be in deepdoo-doo if you did it without a
permit.
You get to the middle of thecountry North Dakota, omaha,
(43:51):
iowa they don't require permits.
You can just go do it In Texas.
You don't even have to have acontractor's license to do
contracting work or foundationrepairs.
You can.
Anybody can just go do it Now.
George Siegal (44:03):
I will say Texas I know I love Texas, but that
scares the hell out of me,Cause-.
Bob Brown (44:06):
Yeah, it's crazy, I mean it's, you know, it's the
while, while West there in Texasthey do.
A lot of cities in Texas, totheir credit, do require an
engineering report and some ofthem require a full report that
investigates the cause.
Not very many, but some of themdo Because it's such a problem
(44:27):
there They've the cities havelearned to kind of deal with it.
But most places around thecenter of the country do not
require permits.
In Arizona even they didn'trequire it for a long time and
now it's finally getting aroundto the point where it's required
, and sometimes it still happenswithout permits.
But I would say 90% of the workis now permitted.
George Siegal (44:49):
Why do you think that is?
Do people just not care enough?
I mean, if you're buying ahouse, that's your biggest
investment I would think youwould want to know everything,
but most people don't.
Bob Brown (45:00):
Well, again, it comes to the sales guy.
If the sales guy is reallyconfident, you know he says oh,
you don't need permits for this,we do it all the time without
permits.
It's a nonpermanable kind ofthing and besides it's gonna
delay your project, it's gonnacost you more money.
We can get this done right awayand be a lot cheaper and we're
gonna do a good job anyway.
That's what the sales guy saysto the homeowner and a lot of
(45:25):
them buy it.
George Siegal (45:27):
Yeah, I think we're all stupid Because we hear
what we want to hear, we wantthe path of least resistance,
but then when things go wrongand we got screwed, then we want
to blame somebody and peoplereally blame themselves.
Bob Brown (45:39):
That's right.
Yeah, after the fact you gotproblems then you become very
angry, but you kind of did it toyourself.
George Siegal (45:49):
Well, listen.
Hey, bob, you're so passionateabout this, I can tell it.
It shows that you love what youdo, and I wish you luck with
the book and everything thatyou're doing.
Thank you so much for coming ontoday.
Hey, I'm happy to be here.
It was a lot of fun.
If you have a story about yourhouse good or bad I'd like to
hear from you.
There's a contact form in theshow notes.
Fill it out and send it my way.
(46:10):
You might be a guest on anupcoming episode.
Thanks for taking the time tolisten today.
I'll see you next time.
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