I am planning to buy a house. Hill country, Austin TX. The house was built in 1978, 3BR, 1800 sq feet, 2 stories. The soil is rather "rocky" there. As I saw a couple of diagonal crack coming from the windows I contracted a foundation inspector to check up the slab underneath the house. He came over and took measurements (he used some powered device with an antenna). The outcome of the measurements is in the attached link. Do you think that 1.5" difference within 40 feet is in tolerance ? He recommended that no foundation repair is needed. I am a little concerned though so I seek a second opinion. Pls let me know - thanks so much Martin
Not a foundation expert, but doesn't sound critical to me. My main concern with a slab foundation is they are prone for termite invasion. Crack usualy will open beneath a wall unseen and termites can enter and do extensive damage before you realize they are around. For that reason I would never be sucker enough to buy a slab house. I lived in Florida for 40 years and in my subdivision every house with a slab floor had a termite problem. Those with crawl spaced were spared. Good luck.
95% houses in this region of Texas are on slab. the soil is just to hard to dig. As far as termites..well decent termite treatment should take care of the problem...
well....the crack in the window is exactly in that corner of the house where there is the highest movement ..1.5" ...I suspect slab moved a little bit ..
Only way I would ever build with a crawlspace was if it had a concrete floor and was tall enough to stand up in. I working in crawlspaces, hated it even when I was young and skinny. My other house down in Louisiana is on a slab, and yeah, it is a pain, too, but nothing like the houses on piers (open crawlspaces, basically) are. This place has basement under the original house, and a (thankfully deep) crawl under the addition, but they used a backwards-mounted standard basement window for the outside access, so getting my fat gut in there is a MAJOR chore.
'Ground is too hard' is nonsense- only valid excuse for not having a basement, IMHO, is the water table being too high. If the lot consists of 2 feet of dirt on top of rock ledge, build up the lot. If that isn't an option, build elsewhere. If you simply MUST build on an undiggable lot, build the first floor out of concrete.
well...I will invite you to hill country in Austin,TX then...if you find a house with a basement I buy you dinner ..I asked around many times ...why no crawl/basement...always the same answer .. it is going to be too expensive to dig that extra 3 to 7 feet ...same story with pools .. if you want to have a pool, buy a house with a pool ..never built one urself ..as it is going to be a waste. project cost 10K, value added maybe 4-5K
I grew up on a slab, and there was no trouble with termites. And as far as I know there was no trouble in the surrounding homes which were also on slabs.
When I was looking for a house to buy, many of the houses that were on a crawlspace had obvious termite damage. Some was not repaired, others had sistered joists. Every crawlspace I ever saw (and I probably have seen a hundred or so) was a haven for spiders, crickets and just about any other insect you could name. Not to mention in many cases standing water.
Here's one, it was a nice looking brick house, where I'd guess all the bugs drowned:
I wouldn't worry your little head about it. It sounds like you have a high spot at the reference point and the rest of the house is within tolerances for a home that old. We have repaired houses that were out by 6" or more and one time a corner was down by 12". If yours is 30 years old and within those tolerances, you are good to go.
Trust your engineer, he probably knows what he is doing. Watch for further movement, but if it is that close after this long, I don't think it is going to move any further. It could have been out that much when it was built.
And yes, I am familiar with homes in this area.
Another thing is this; We don't have homes with basements in this area because we don't need them. There is no frost heave worth talking about, and that is why most homes have basements. It is easier to dig down below the frost line and leave it as a room after pouring your foundation walls. Costs more to fill it back up with dirt than it is to just leave it.
Here you only need about 36" of footer to support your home, so we just trench it. I have dug enough in this country to know that it is not too hard to dig, just unnecessary. I have done plenty of homes out in the hill country and many have had septic systems which we dug with back hoe (sometimes needing a hoe ram).
Neither reason is valid for not having basements in this area. See my other response in this thread for the real reason. But it boils down to this: You don't need one, so spend your money on living space that costs less. If you want one, you can have one, it will just cost you.
The existence of crawl spaces and then basements generally follows the decreasing winter temperatures since the foundation footings have to go below the frost line which in the northern states is pretty deep. If you have to dig that deep anyway, you build a basement. In TX the frost line is what, 1"?
Eh- different strokes for different folks, etc. I can understand why, if you have a huge lot as is common in new construction down south, you would want to put the square footage (aka money) above ground where it shows. But aside from the frostline question, since you are digging anyway, a basement can be the cheapest enclosed space you can add to a house. I'm not a fan of finished basements, never have been. But I really, really like having a bigass bare concrete room downstairs to stack stuff and do messy projects. And it DOES make installing and servicing all the mechanicals much less of a pain. My ideal would be a walkout basement- best of both worlds.
Yeah, even up north here, the new house-of-many-gables 12-12 roofed cookie-cutter subdivisions (several notches below McMansions) usually skip the basements- they claim it doesn't add to the curb appeal, and allows them to hit their price point for the same amount of finished space. Personally, I'd rather skip all the superfluous gables and such(and maybe the dedicated dining room and formal living room), and build a slightly smaller 70s style ranch with a basement. Which is more useful- a tall attic that can't even be used for storage, and is 120+ in summer, or a deep cool dry basement?
But that is just me- YMMV, especially if your living depends on building houses in the currently popular styles. (I do feel kind of sorry for the people who were the first ones to move in to many of the recent mid-range and McMansion subdivisions- those projects were the hardest hit by the recent housing crunch, and it will be years, if ever, before many of those subdivisions get built out, or the later phases and connecting roads get built. A lot of those people have to be upside down bigtime on resale value.)
Guess I really shouldn't rip on the currently popular styles- my 81 YO father still makes a decent living in Louisiana, designing Southern/'Cajun'/faux French style McMansions for the rich doctors. He thinks they are silly, too, but that is what the well-off customers want. :^/
Down here, the digging just involves a trenching machine for about a day. Then you run the plumbing and whatever electrical and pour the slab. You only need about 3' deep footers or less for that.
Digging for a basement would involve a backhoe, trucks to haul off excess, most likely a hoe ram, several people to build forms, pouring the foundation walls and waterproofing them, backfilling and compacting exterior, pouring the basement floor, then building the first floor, which would probably be framed.
The difference in cost is vast. Without a basement, the foundation and floor costs about 7.00 sf (not including plumbing, etc. which is involved with any kind of construction). The basement would cost about about 30 dollars a sf to get to the same point in construction.
For various reasons, I have only seen about 5 basements in my 35 years of construction in this area. They just don't make sense down here. When someone has a basement, it is sort of a; Wow, that is wild! kind of thing.
Nobody with money to burn. You can go ahead and spend the money if you want.
Lousy thinking. The builder who spends an extra $10,000 to fight with jack hammers and explosives to build a basement may not get that extra $10,000 in selling price. Only an idiot will spend $10,000 to get back $3,000. Send me your $10,000 and I will give you $3,000 for it.
You are very opinionated and don't seem to think very deeply. Yes, solid rock may be a major deterent, but hard pan clay and other soils should not. In this region, houses without a basement have problems selling. That extra $10,000.00 can double your square footage, great for hobbies, storage and other uses. The cost per square foot is quite small. Only your idiot would be too cheap to turn down doubling your square footage for a small price.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.