@WakeUpCall – Waking Up with the House Whisperer

The House Whisperer Dean Sharp is back on Wake Up Call for another edition of ‘Waking Up with the House Whisperer!’ Today, Dean talks about foundation turmoil.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's say good morning now to the host of Home
on KFI our house, Whisper Dean Sharp Dean, we're talking foundations,
and I don't think it's the same kind that women
say are very important.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's the that's the foundation I do not understand at all.
I don't. I mean, I have no experience with it whatsoever.
So you're gonna you're gonna have.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
To take that visual, Okay, So yeah, let's let's talk
about foundations for your home.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah, we're talking this weekend actually on Sunday show. I've
got a couple of very very special guests. I actually
have my foundation guy, my foundation repair guys with me
on the show this weekend. Because this is such a
scary thing for so many people. You know, it's one
thing when you kind of are familiar with something that's
going on with your house, like you know, I would

(00:53):
trust most homeowners to you know, figure out what they
need to do in regards to a painter, because you know,
people understand paint kind of ish sort of enough. But
this is something when your foundation starts to fail, when
you see a crack in your foundation, or when a
floor starts going out, a level or a retaining wall

(01:15):
is starting to lean. Man, this is just outside of
most people's wheelhouse altogether. And so we're going to take
all three hours of the show on Sunday talk about it,
talk about what is and what isn't a crack to
be worried about, and hopefully gives people some peace of
mind and some direction when it comes to a failing

(01:35):
foundation for their home.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Okay, so I have a question for you. You were saying,
you know, like, how do you know whether the foundation's
failing and that kind of stuff? Are there warning signs?
Like if you get a crack in your drywall, is
that maybe a sign that the foundation is shifted to
a point where it's going to really need some repairs.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, no, probably not. And that's the tricky thing. You know,
house to shift all the time, all on their own,
and you know, from time to time it's not unusual
at all for a crack in the drywall to appear.
The real question about cracks, let's just talk about cracks
in the slab. I mean, forget about the drywall. Let's
just go right to the concrete itself. The real question

(02:15):
is what is the nature of the crack? Is it
just what we would call in the industry, kind of
a spider crack, which is a very thin crack, hasn't
spread open, one side is level with the other side.
Those are the kind of cracks that we actually expect
to happen in concrete over time. You know, we have
this saying in the industry that there's only two kinds

(02:37):
of concrete in the world, concrete that has cracked and
concrete that has not cracked yet because it's inevitable. It's
just a brittle material. But the question is, what's the
nature of the crack. Now, if we've got a crack
in the foundation where we are starting to see daylight,
and I mean in the sense that it's really starting
to open up, or one side of that concrete is

(03:00):
starting to change elevation from the other side, or the
level of a floor in a room is starting to change.
You start to walk into a room and you feel
like you're going downhill a little bit. That kind of thing.
These are the things to be concerned about.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Okay, yeah, I'm thinking of all these like, because I
used to have a one hundred year old house and
I remember seeing like down in the basement. I was like,
is that a really bad thing? Is that fixable or
am I going to have to redo the whole foundation?
You know, you just start thinking about and can you
are there quick fixes for it? Or do you really

(03:35):
have to replace a foundation, because I've seen people have
had to do that too.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
No, I mean, there are definitely failures of foundations that
require a foundation replacement, and that is something that I
would not wish on my worst enemy, because it's a
whole thing. But the good news is most of the
time there are fixes, especially if you get somebody involved
soon enough who really knows what they're doing, a foundation expert.
So yeah, there are fixed and there are stop gaps

(04:01):
along the way if you catch it early. So it's
very very much like you know, a problem with a bone,
a broken bone in the body, and it's like if
you address it soon, then the chances of it healing
getting back into place without minute, you know, without a
huge amount of fuss, are pretty good. And so it's
just something to keep an eye out and not to

(04:21):
ignore once you start to see one of these problematic
signs show up, and we'll talk about what those are
on Sunday.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Okay, and that is Sunday from nine to noon right
here on Home with Dean Sharp on KFI and of
course he's also on on Saturdays from six to eight
am and it's going to be a very foundational program,
I'm sure I know. Thank you, Dean Sharp. You can
also follow Dean at Home with Dean. We'll talk to
you next week.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Thanks Amy.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
All right,