All Forum Posts by: John Hodson

I use the Bigger Pockets calculators.  They're excellent.

Honestly if this is an isolated area of the house you shouldn't have much concern; I've seen much worse. Drain the water away and keep an eye on it. 

If this foundation/slab is on clay your biggest enemy is water. Keep it away from your house the best you can. If you get problems after you have done your best to keep the water away then it's either a deeper compressible soil layer or the house was built half *** (usually this is the case).

The engineer in me says "based on the pictures and information provided it appears that normal shifting and/or settlement of the foundation has occurred in the area of concern and further remediation/monitoring is required to reduce the potential of further subsidence" ect. ect... The contractor in me says "that's normal, I'll caulk that right up and it will look brand new" 

Hopefully this paints a good picture of my thoughts but at the end of the day no one on here including me knows for sure if there is an issue or not without seeing the whole picture. Good Luck!

John when I bought my house there is a crack in the foundation I had foundation people come out give me a price on it which they gave me and a lifetime warranty they did the foundation work and what it does it clears you for futures selling of the house when that comes up or turning the title over

Are you keeping the home as a long term rental or flipping it? What year was the house build? Were any of the walls pushed in anywhere or only the slight settling we see in the pictures? Are those pics all from the one corner?

Let me give you a bit of an education about cracks in foundations. When you have vertical cracks, as in this case, it is likely that the footer cracked and settled a bit. I doubt that you have water collecting in the corner with freezing, lifting and shifting block, like we can have in the colder climates. Whenever you see a long, horizontal cracks along the block on the inside of the foundation wall, it means the the pressure of the dirt is causing the cracks and the wall was not reinforced properly with durawire and/or rebars. That is a much more serious problem than the slight horizontal issue those pictures show. When you have a 60 plus year old home and one corner settled a half inch, remember there is still dirt under the footer where the settling happened and the chances of it settling further are minimal. Of course there are variables. If you are purchasing as a rental I would have no concern about it. 

@John Hodson From the pictures it looks like it could just be settling which almost every older home in Indianapolis has. Many are on clay soil which gets a lot of settling. A good foundation contractor can tell you what's going on. If you're concerned about foundation problems. you might want to more at homes build in the 50's and 60's on slab foundations.

John,

You are in escrow.... this is the time you scurry around and verify that all the assumptions you made when entering into the purchase agreement are correct.  Call some foundation reputable foundation guys, have them out and get their insights and quote as soon as you can.  

It doesn't look like a big (i.e. expensive) deal at all, but the time  to resolve that question is NOW.  

Get going!

@John Hodson

Are these the only areas with cracking? If so, then it doesn't seem like a very wide spread issue that would be a major problem but no one can say for sure without being there. The picture with the crack through the block is concerning but this could just be an isolated area. 

If it was me I would just make sure there are gutters on the house and make sure to have proper drainage away from your foundations. Keep an eye on it and if it gets worse then hire an engineer.