Foundation Movement & Settlement Signs of Damage

As this moves down there’ll be a crack across the floor in that direction because the cracks are on this side and it’s going to heave the floor up in those Locations

It has nothing to do with expansive soil folks even though you’ve been told that for a very long time the evidence states very loudly that this rainwater coming down here landing here next to the house is causing the foundation to break in several locations

Across here it is articulating down this is called settlement, settlement causes cracks on your interior drywall doorways windows and thresholds or the weakest link in your walls and in your ceiling and in the drywall they usually cracks at the joint of the drywall which is a weakest link it’s not because it was a bad tape job it’s because your foundation is moving

Here’s another one this is what you look for when you investigate around your house

You’re looking for these vertical breaks this is going to be the first signs of settlement

So usually what happens is people find their floors heaving up cracking your tile

That’s what’s happening that’s settlement

This right here is something totally different I’m going to talk about this hurricane strap

It comes up about eight nails in it goes down into the footing because of the fact that this is on the exterior here and it’s exposed to the elements

It’s made of steel so when you have oxygen & moisture and steel together they have a party called oxidation

Oxidation process causes a low voltage electrical current running through it expanding the steel up to five times its size in diameter growing out and busting this side out

I just dug down and just it fell off that’s what’s going on here and the whole thought process well

It’s usually at these window locations or pop outs in the front of your garage and next to your garage doors on the side

On the corners those are the locations that are stated in the footing detail plans and the whole reason is to hold down this side of the house in case we get one of those hubs coming in and they usually come in pairs

These high winds they come up and can lift this side of the house so by inserting these hurricane straps it helps hold this down but it is not a hundred percent necessary because the fact  they’re rusting and it causes all kinds of repairs

That sort of thing the repair would be to this would be to expose it remove as much rust off of there as possible

We have a specialized rust inhibitor two-part epoxy that we paint on that to stop the electrolysis then we patch it with structural grout has no Portland cement in it and then we patch it in waterproof and then we paint it and put the dirt back that’s the repair

However this footing is 12 inches tall anyway the homeowners not here I can’t look on the garage to see if it’s post-tension or not but we’re already down here to the bottom of the foundation which is right here

It was 12 inches so the footing was poured then the top was put on

I’m not seeing any evidence of interior reinforcement steel I don’t believe that that’s what it is

I could confirm post tension with a stamp on the garage floor so this texture on the side here it looks like there’s been wood here that is a texture that’s widely known as they’re using those type of forms to form post tension

It’s 12 inches tall the footing so these footings are very shallow

We live in Arizona hardly ever rains in Arizona hardly anybody’s getting rain gutters why should I have to worry about rainwater that’s pretty much what the consensus is here in Arizona

It’s an arid zone well because they’re so shallow and because all this rainwater if you calculate all of the rainwater that comes off these roofs that’s a huge amount of rainwater coming down right here right next to a shallow foundation so it’s like a 10-pound bowling ball on top of mud what do you think is going to happen it’s going to go down it’s going to cause those vertical brakes it’s going to cause cracks in your ceiling doors not to close floors to heave up tiles to crack

Just simply tap on the crack that’s heaved up enough it’s going to be hollow underneath there and always is don’t buy into that expansive soil issue that a lot of people talk about

It’s all about controlling the water next to a foundation that has a lot of vertical pressure being applied by gravity down to it the dirt is holding up the house when you saturate the dirt when there’s enough soil moisture content in the soil you can no longer hold the vertical pressure is being applied and it goes down causing vertical brakes causing floors to heave cracks in your ceiling tiles to break

I can’t emphasize that enough it’s very simple and it is exactly what I just stated