Foundations | Hour 1

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I am Dean Sharp The House Whisper, Custom home Builder,
custom home Designer. And you know, every week your guide
to better understanding that place where you live. What does
this whole house Whisper thing mean? Well, you know what.
It's a lot like helping somebody become a healthier person.
It means finding a way to see beyond the design

(00:30):
shortcomings of your home, the alteration traumas that has suffered
at the hands of various people, and try to find
a way to connect it, sometimes for the first time ever,
to the best version of itself, to the land that
it's built on, and to the best life of its occupants.
That that, my friend, is when a house becomes a

(00:51):
home And how are we doing that today? We're doing
it because I've got a couple of very special guests
in studio with me today. I have and you've heard
me talk about them before during various ads and stuff.
I got Mark and James from Foundation Repair La sitting
in the studio with me. Guys, Good morning, thanks for

(01:11):
being here. Hey, Good morning Dan, Good morning Ding Oh,
you're both sounding great. These guys sound great. Roy, he's
a great Those are great radio voices. All right, don't
be too good this morning, because you know I want
my job. Foundation repair, la. Now, you guys have been
in the not the not the pouring of new foundations.

(01:32):
This is not what you guys do. You guys aren't
the concrete guys that that that we call when when
I want a new driveway or new build on my place.
But you guys specialize in fixing stuff that's going wrong
with the house, right, foundation repair repair being the key
word there. Tell us a little bit about you know,

(01:53):
your history and how you guys have made it to
the top of the pile as it were.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Well, I mean it's years of experience has got to
the top of the pile. And you know, foundations on
existing homes. Normally you build a foundation when there's an
empty lot, it's real simple. And fixing an existing house
with the foundation it's a.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Little bit backwards now the house is in the way.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
So as a very specialized trade and it's something that
we've been doing for years and you learn the tricks
of the trade.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
You could say exactly, James, how about you how'd you
get into this whole thing? Well, this is actually my
father in Lawmark, so we've worked together, you know, for
the past ten years or so. I guess that was
my entrance to it. So family, family relations, and I
enjoyed it. I got good at it, so I've stuck

(02:48):
with So you got in it because it was your
father in law, just just like happy wife, happy life.
That was the whole reason. Or No, yeah, like the
shotgun wedding, except it's a career, all right, you know what, Hey,
I'm up. I'm down for the honesty here. No, obviously,
you're very talented at what you guys do, and so
you've been doing this for quite a while now, and

(03:10):
you've done it for other companies here in LA whose
names we will not mention here on the air, but
they are losers. I'm just saying these guys you have
left them in the dust, and you guys now But
here's what I love about what you do. I love
the fact that you guys have decided to pace the
growth of the company and to center the whole thing
around your continued involvement in everything, right, so that your

(03:34):
hands on with everything. You're on every job. One of
you is on every job. Isn't that true? Am I
overstating that case? No, that's absolutely true. We have to
James and I.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
I mean, it is a family run business, so we
will check out each of our jobs and will always
go there. James, you go to the east side, and
I'll go to the west side, And so we're running
around making sure our crews are doing a perfect job.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
That's kind of what we want exactly. That's why I
call on you guys for all of our foundation repair issues,
because you know, I trust you both, and we just
have to figure this stuff out. You got to put
our heads together and figure it out and get it done.
This is a conversation that is so so far outside

(04:25):
of a typical homeowner's wheelhouse. That's why it's so important
as far as I'm concerned today, because this is not
late Like I used this example. I thought of this.
We were talking about this before the show. If a
typical homeowner goes outside and they see like a twelve
inch section of the paint on the side of their
house is cracked and peeling, and they're like, oh wow,

(04:47):
all right, well I don't want to deal with that.
I better call a painter. And a painter comes out
and says, oh, yeah, yeah, we can get that handled
five thousand dollars, you know, and homeowners like, what what
are you talking about? Get lost, buddy, because they know
they know enough at least about paint that they're like,
that shouldn't cost five thousand dollars. But what if somebody

(05:08):
with a raised foundation house finds a twelve inch crack
in the stem wall of their home twelve same length,
same length of weird thing, right, call somebody out and
they say, oh yeah, m hmm, yeah, yeah, that's going
to be five thousand dollars to fix. They don't immediately
reject that out of hand. Why because they have no

(05:28):
clue what that should cost to fix or if it's
even something that should be fixed. That's what I'm talking about.
This is something that's way out of most people's wheelhouse.
But our goal today, guys, will be to have a
conversation that kind of lays the groundwork at least for
people to at least understand whether what they're looking at
or dealing with with their house is something that they

(05:49):
need to call somebody in on, and if they do,
what their expectations should be and what the various kinds
of problems are and maybe the causes along the way,
so we can handle that right.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Sure, yeah, yeah, I mean you said it. Groundwork. Groundwork
deals right with the ground right there. Your house foundation
sits on the ground exactly, and uh so that's where
we're going today. Of course, also mid show in just
a bit, we're going to be taking your calls. And
you know, when it comes to your calls, you can
call me about anything. I'm talking foundation repair today. When

(06:20):
it comes to your calls, you set the agenda for
the show. Whatever's got you scratching your head about your
home design, construction, DIY, inside, outside, hardescape, landscape.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
We have all the scapes covered. I got you. We'll
put our heads together. We will get it figured out.
The number to reach me and the phone lines are
open right now. We already got a couple of calls
on the board. The number to reach me eight three
three two. Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two.
Ask Dean eight three three two. Ask Dean. It's gonna

(06:51):
be a great show. Go nowhere. Foundation repair today on
Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on Demand from
KFI AM sixty.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
We are talking Foundation Repair today with my very special
in studio guest Mark and James, the Foundation guys, My
Foundation guys from Foundation Repair LA And all right, I
want to dive right in because we got a lot
of ground to cover. And like I said before the break,
this is just an area where most homeowners are way

(07:27):
out of their wheelhouse on this. Don't know how to
diagnose it, don't know what it would cost, don't even
know how to evaluate the guys coming over to the
house whether they're legit, would they know what they're talking about,
or they're gonna rip me off. It's just one of
those areas where we can do a great service to
people today. However, I have to start with this right
during the break, we were talking and Mark that your

(07:48):
wife's name is Missy. Yes, And James was saying that
that Missy gave him a direction about you on the
show today because you have a tendency to talk over
their people. Yes, that's true. Is that the case? And
are they listening right now? Is Missy listening and your
three daughters they're all listening. Yeah, all right, So I

(08:09):
just I just and I invited everybody you wanted to bring,
but they have something else going on. But they are.
They're gonna rue the day that they weren't sitting here
in the studio with you. You know why, because Missy
and Mark's daughters. This may be the first time ever
in your life that Mark has a mute button right
next to him, in which we can just simply you

(08:31):
just press your button and it's done. He's out, he's out.
I have to do it for me. I might do it.
I might do it mid sentence, just to demonstrate the
power of it. I just want to just want them
to know what they're missing. So that's all. That's all. So, James,
you have you have fulfilled your responsibility. I just want you.
I want Missy to know that you told me and
now we know. Okay, we know the truth of it.

(08:54):
All right, guys, let's talk about foundation stuff. How does
the foundation really work? I know it's a huge question,
but just give me, you know the basics. People know, Okay,
the foundation. That's the concrete under my house, right, the
slab or the whatever. What are they doing there? Okay?

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Well, normally when people are thinking about the foundation, it's
a black hole down there. It's like nobody knows what's
down there. It's you know, spiders dirty. The foundation is
actually a simple system. It just is what's holding the
house in the earth. It's just holding it up, and
the house is built on top of that foundation. And

(09:36):
the foundation is sitting in the soil or bedrock, ideally bedrock,
though many homes are not in bedrock. They're sitting on
the dirt, and the dirt is given the support or
maybe not quite enough.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
So this is important because when we talk about foundation failure,
there are two ways that the foundation, you know, essentially
two big categories in which a foundation can give a
house a problem, and not one of them is not
necessarily what we would call a foundation failure. Right, we
were just talking about the idea that what James, you

(10:11):
were telling me that these the houses that you're working on,
and is it Monacito. Yeah, it's in the Monacito Heights area.
That whole slabs, whole house. These are raised foundation raised foundations. Okay,
they're raised foundations. They're just sinking yep in The foundations
aren't cracking, So technically the foundations not failing. Yeah, it's

(10:32):
what's beneath it. The soil is letting go. So maybe
first first rule is that a foundation is only as
good as the soil that it's sitting on at some point. Right, Absolutely,
a foundation, I've always I like telling my client's foundation
is kind of like a snowshoe. And if you understand
the idea of a snowshoe, right, if you walk through
the snow, just in your regular feet, you're going right

(10:53):
on through. Your weight's going right on through. You're up
to your waist in snow. You put on a snowshoe,
and what it does is it spreads that just distributes
the weight of your body over a larger area, and
therefore it keeps you up higher, right, makes you walkable. Right.
So a foundation, a slab something like that, you're taking
all that weight bearing of the house and you're putting
it over, you know, keying it into the soil, but

(11:16):
also spreading it out and distributing it as much as
possible so it stays up instead of going down. But
we all know, especially in older homes, that there are
lots of areas where it goes down. One of the
areas one of the concerns is that concrete, it's very strong.
Concrete is a very very strong substance in one sense, right,

(11:39):
concrete is compressively what we call compressively very strong. We
could take a little six inch cube of concrete just
by itself, and if we were careful about it, park
a car on top of it, and the concrete wouldn't
even know it was there. Right, But then leave, you know,
move the car toside, Grab that block of concrete, take
a small hammer and whack it, and just crack it

(12:02):
right in two. Right. Because concrete is compressively very strong,
it can handle dead loads, you know, loads bearing down
on it. But it's brittle by nature, doesn't have any
tensile strength. It doesn't have any bendable, stretchable strength. And
that's why we put steel inside of it rebar, which
is just short for reinforcement bar. So what everybody is

(12:25):
kind of sort of used to is the idea that
your foundation, hopefully unless you're living in my house, has
a combination of concrete and steel rebar running through it,
and they're trying to work together to give it both
tensile strength and compressive strength at the same time. But
the concrete's going to crack, This is my point. The
concrete itself is going to crack. You guys know this

(12:47):
better than I do. This old saying in our industry
that there's only two kinds of concrete in the world,
concrete with cracks and concrete that hasn't cracked yet. Right,
It's inevitable that a concrete at some point at least
gets a little bit of a stress fracture or something
in it. But the point is this, this is my questions,
what I'm leading up to. Cracks seem to be the

(13:10):
thing that garner the most attention from a homeowner. They
you know, they're they're redoing a room and they pull
up the carpet and there's crack in the slab, or
they're outside. They've got a raised foundation house and they're
outside and they see a crack in the corner of
the raised foundation something like that. A crack. There's a crack.
And the question is are all cracks equal in concern?

(13:32):
And if not, how do we tell the ones that
aren't a big deal from the ones that we should
be concerned about. So when we come back from the break,
can we talk about that? Can we sort of absolutely
think that through and we will cover that when we return.
I'm here with Mark and James the Foundation guys from
Foundation Repair LA. You are listening to Dean Sharp, the

(13:56):
house Whisperer.

Speaker 4 (13:57):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp. Demand from KFI
AM six forty here.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
To transform your ordinary house into an extraordinary home. You
know we're doing that today by having a conversation about
one of the most difficult diagnostic issues with a house
and one of the most serious issues, and that is
when the foundation is in need of repair. And we
haven't actually even I haven't even scratched the surface as

(14:23):
to what's going wrong with your foundation, what that looks like.
But we are laying a good foundation I hope of
understanding first so that at least you can kind of
wrap your head around this. So right before the break, guys,
own by the way, I'm joined in studio by my
expert guests, Mark and James from Foundation Repair LA, the

(14:46):
Foundation guys, and they are my Foundation guys as well.
Right before the break, we talked about cracks. Cracks are
going to be the thing that most excite or unnerve
people when it comes to their slab or their you know,
their stem walls or whatever that I mean. It's got
to be the largest indicator of something like, oh, I

(15:06):
got to make a call, you know, is this a problem?
But not all cracks are equal James, Yes, so correct.
What are the kinds of things that people should be
concerned about, maybe the kinds of things they shouldn't be
concerned about. So cracks are a very small part of
the puzzle that we're looking at when we look at
a foundation house to try and determine what is going

(15:27):
on with it. I mean, you can have cracks in
the stucco that are you know, just from poor stucco workmanship.
The window has been replaced and there's a crack around it,
you know, shrinkage from the original scratch coat. That doesn't
necessarily indicate a foundation problem. You know, you can look
at cracks in the foundation. Typically a lot of concrete
foundations are cracked to a greater or lesser extent. But

(15:49):
are they opening up? Is one foundation wall rotating? You know?
Is it sinking? So those are the types of things
that we'll look at, and we start inside the home.
We want to see how the floors are doing. Are
they level, you know, is it settling? Is there framing deflection?
So cracks will lead us toward the problem that we're

(16:10):
looking for, but they're generally just an indication of an issue.
So first lesson is there has to be multiple symptoms
in order to indicate a real problem. So if I
walk outside and I see this what we call a
spider crack, which is an unspread with no gap, right,
there's no rolling, there's no rotation. One side of the

(16:30):
crack is completely flush and even with the other side
of the crack, so there's no differential, there's no shift there.
It's just a spider crack running down the side of
my foundation stemwall. But my floors are level, everything. I mean,
there's zero other indications. That's not something for me to
lose sleepover, not necessarily. If there is a major foundation problem,
there will be more than just spider cracking in the stucco. Right,

(16:53):
it makes anybody feel better, there's spider cracking in my stucco,
but my foundation is perfect, Okay, Well it is, so
of course it is. It's you know, that's just one
of the one of the minor indications we look for
for a problem. But typically if there's a major problem
with a foundation, you're going to see it. You know,
doors and windows not closing, and I don't mean sticking
a little bit. I mean, your front door no longer closes,

(17:16):
or it's had the cow custom shave on the top
of the door, and it's no longer right. The door
is no longer square because it's been settling for so long.
What if you what if you walk into your family
room and you get the sense that you're walking downhill.
There's there's a good chance there's a problem there. Okay,
all right, let me throw another toffee at you. What
if you wake up in the morning and I open

(17:37):
my bedroom door and where my house used to be
is now like several hundred feet down the hillside, and
I'm just kind of like open air. Yeah, there's is
that a problem? Yes? Okay, all right? Uh what if? No,
I'm not gonna go there. I was gonna say, what
you know, what what if I what if we pull
the carpet back because I want to replace the carpet,

(17:58):
and I find a gaping sinkhole in the center of
my living room and there's a smell of sulfur coming
out and maybe voices down down below, I mean way
down there. We might pass on that one. Oh you guys,
you guys would not come out for that one. Yeah,
that's a problem. We may not look at that. That
may not be your area of specialty. Yeah, okay, all right,
that's fine, no problem. I'll let you go on that one. Okay.

(18:21):
So not all cracks are the same and there, and
there really should be more indications of something going on
than just the crack. What about people who are concerned
when they see like white powder building up on the
inside of their like their their stem wall inside their
garage or retaining wall down below or something outside and there,

(18:43):
and you know, we could calls all the time. They're like,
I'm afraid my concrete is deteriorating. Yeah, so this is
the one we see a lot. So the white powder
that forms on the surface of concrete or block is effluorescence,
not effervescence. No, that's what's in your sparkling water, that's right,
And that is actually minerals that have been broken down
by water passing through the concrete and they've come to

(19:03):
the surface. So all it is is an indication that
water's moved through that. What you don't want to do
is paint that wall because now you're going to tramp
it in there right there are It can be bad enough.
You need to do something about it. Over time, the
water can rust, the rebar calls, you know, ball damage,
deterioration of the concrete. So if it's bad, have it

(19:24):
looked at. If it's not living space, there's not really
a you know, concern with moisture. Now, if this is
your bedroom wall and there's efflorescence on your bedroom wall,
you know that's something that can become a health hazard
with water and mold, so obviously get that looked at.
But you know, so again, I just want to underscore that.
So you're saying that's it's water passing through the concrete,

(19:46):
So what they're seeing is not the deterioration of the concrete. Correct,
Water's passing through. Water has mineral content. Yeah, the water
hits the outside air and evaporates off and it leaves
the salts and the minerals behind. That's what you're seeing. Yeah,
it'll taking some of the salts and minerals out of
the concrete too, but it's not necessarily deteriorating the concrete.
Gotcha instantly, It will over a long period of time, right, Right,

(20:08):
It's a very normal process. It happens almost to every house, right,
But there are certain situations where we don't want to
see it. We don't want to see it in my basement, ye, right,
we don't want to see it in those like James
was saying, like in a bedroom, a wall that has
a bedroom to it, So that becomes an issue of

(20:28):
water control on the other side of that wall, like
a retaining wall outside or something of that nature. What
do you do if you have a moisture problem against
your slab, Like I'm getting too much moisture in the
crawl space, or I've got too much moisture building up
on the backside of retaining I mean water. I often
tell people, I'm like, you know, I'm going to show

(20:50):
you a picture of the Grand Canyon and remind you
that at the end of the day, water wins. Okay,
water hydrostatic pressure that builds up behind any thing is
eventually given enough time going to move that thing. And
that's what we don't want, right. So we talk about
like building the retaining wall, that the retaining wall has

(21:10):
weeps at the bottom, and people are like, what are weeps?
Or We're going to put a French drain at the bottom.
We're going to waterproof the backside of that wall to
direct water away, so we get the water from building
up behind the wall. These are things that I want
to talk to you guys about. Can we do that
next segment kind of talk about that and then what
happens if that wasn't done or if the waterproofing has failed.

(21:32):
How do you guys actually address that. We'll talk about
that right on the other side. All right, y'all, more
good stuff on your way. This is Dean Sharp the
House whispod.

Speaker 4 (21:42):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on Demand from
KFI AM six forty.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Intent and design, good design, even good design. When it
comes to the repairs that you're going to make on
your foundation, there's a right way to do it. There
are a hundred wrong ways to do it. I was
just talking to the guys during the break here about
home inspections. We're going to get to that. We're going
to get to home inspections. People James happens to be
terrified of when he sees a newly remodeled and flipped

(22:11):
home go on the market in the neighborhood. Because he's
just tell tell us your concern real quick. Now. We're
getting back to terrified. Maybe's the wrong word. They were terrified.
It puts me on high alert. Okay, yeah, why just
to explain to everybody why real quick? Well, unfortunately a
lot of issues get covered up when a home is
bought that's in very poor condition. It's remodeled with the

(22:33):
intent for somebody to make a profit on then selling it.
It's not always done correctly, and sometimes major issues are
covered up. That's not always. I'm not calling out all flippers.
I don't need a series of phone calls from them
after this, but sometimes it happens and things get covered
up and home inspectors won't see it, and unfortunately we
find it later when the homeowner starts noticing huge cracks

(22:56):
in the walls, you know, and then it could have
saved them a lot of headache. Yeah, a foundation inspection,
all right, So we're going to talk about that, because
when it comes to real estate, that's everybody's like, well,
you get a home inspector. A home inspector's gonna take
care of that, all right. I don't want to get
off on that right now, but we're going to come
back to that for sure, for sure. All Right, before
the breakout was talking about so we talked about cracks

(23:18):
and unlevel floors and things like things that should alert
somebody that something's going on. The other thing that homeowners
tend to pick up on, or things like we talked efflorescence, right,
the white powder that comes through when there's a moisture
problem and moisture and and you know moisture issues in walls.
So what's going on behind a wall or behind a

(23:38):
foundation or retaining wall, what needs how do you guys
even address that.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Well, Drainage is a huge part of moisture coming through
the house into the walls. You know, certainly if you
have a basement, a basement or many of the hillside
homes are set into the hillside. First floor is actually
backed up against the mountains in underground, you know, maybe
eight ten feet underground, and the second floor is completely

(24:05):
above grade, and that retaining wall, there's a wall behind
that lower floor that is into the hillside. And you know,
hillside will drain moisture, and if the moisture makes it through, well,
it ends up inside the living space and that's always
a big problem. Back in the day to many how

(24:26):
old the structure is not many products lasted very long,
if any were even used to keep it waterproofed.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
And they put a little mastic on the backside of
the wall, but no protection board, and so the shifting
of soil and rocks grape belong and cut through it,
or it gets brittle and it cracks or whatever.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Right, maybe never had a sub drain and drain a
French drain there, maybe never even had one when it
was first installed. You'd go back twenties and stuff like that.
Construction principles were different. We always talk about the seventies
and eighties like a bad time of construction because stuff,
much stuff got thrown up and cheaply products were not

(25:04):
high quality products. So if you do see moisture coming in,
you got to address it. And that's done by you know, basically,
we have to excavate, waterproof the wall, put a drain
system in. The waterproofing membranes we use today are very
good materials. They last forever, very rubber like materials. Elastomeric

(25:26):
is a term. It's very flexible material doesn't dry out
the old asphalt based products used tar in the back
in the old days, that dries out, cracks, right.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
So it's not unlike it's not unlike the way we
recommend that I recommend roofing materials these days, and the
underlayment under a roof as opposed to using old fashioned
building paper roofing paper which is asphalt embedded, stiff stuff
that's going to crack and stuff. I'm a huge fan of,
you know, elastomeric bitamous underlayments that self seal and stretch

(25:59):
and move and shift without having to bust open over time.
And you're talking about the same kind of material, different application,
but the same same theory at least up against foundation walls.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Absolutely, because you want to prevent that from happening ten
years from now Whatso whatever you use has got to
be life, it's got to last a life of that
building and structure. So today we have those products and
if done right, it works perfectly well and you'll never
have a problem again. So there's two kinds of problems
on water. There's the subsurface water, which is actually a

(26:32):
very small amount of water. Most of our water is
on the surface from rain, okay, coming off the roof,
down the gutters, down the hillside, on the hillside, right,
If it's not controlled well, that runoff it becomes subsurface water.
Now we've got water underground. You get natural fissures in

(26:53):
the mountain side and you get water five feet down,
ten feet down. Especially, a lot of times water will
run once it's very saturated hillside, it'll run along the
bedrock layer and soil above maybe ten fifteen. We've seen
twenty feet of clay like soils and stuff, and right
at the bedrock layer below is a stream of water.

(27:18):
It's coming down, so that you know, depends on the area. Well,
that's something that's happening at the Palisades, I mean the
whole mountain sides movement.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, that the peninsula Palisferti, I said, Palisades, Palas Ferdy's peninsula. Yes,
where there's a massive bedrock slip joint under there and Portuges,
the Portuguese Bend and there's a bedrock slip joint that's
way under surface right that has been moving actually, it's

(27:47):
the whole time houses have been there. But then after
those severe winters that we had a few years back,
we got some a lot of moisture hit that bedrock
and that whole thing got slippery, and now the whole
thing is just sliding right off into the ocean. Essentially
it's a slipplane. Yeah, literally, that term. Yeah, all right,
so much to talk about. So when we come back,
this is what I want to hear. I want to

(28:08):
hear how you guys approach a house then, okay, And
you were telling me that, Hey, it starts before we
even pull up in front of the house, like when
we drive into the neighborhood. We're looking at things like
is this a cut and fill neighborhood? Is a hillside
neighbor What are the conditions of the whole geographic terrain
around the house, and everything from that all the way

(28:30):
into now you're standing in my living room and what
you guys are looking for us? So can you explain
that when we come back, Absolutely all right, we will
do that and so much more when we return your
Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
This has been Home with Dean Sharp, The House Whisper.
Tune into the live broadcast on KFI AM six forty
every Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time, and
every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or
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