Episode 1991
Digging Deep: Foundation Fixes with RK Bob Brown, The Dirt Whisperer
Grab your hard hats and get ready to dig deep into the world of foundations, folks! We're rolling back to one of our favorite chats with RK Bob Brown, a.k.a. the Dirt Whisperer, who’s here to drop some serious knowledge on foundation repair. If you’re a homeowner (or know one), this episode is a goldmine of info you can’t afford to skip. Bob dives into the nitty-gritty of foundation myths, the tricks of the trade, and why calling an engineer is the smartest move you can make when foundation issues arise. Trust me, after hearing this, you’ll be armed with the tools you need to navigate the tricky terrain of home foundations like a pro. So, whether your floors are sloping or you’re just curious about the whole foundation scene, let’s get into it!
For homeowners, understanding the ins and outs of foundation repair can feel like trying to decipher hieroglyphics. RK Bob Brown, affectionately known as 'The Dirt Whisperer,' dives into the depths of foundation issues in this enlightening revisit of an earlier episode. With Eric G. out sick, Bob takes the reins to reveal the truth behind common foundation myths and the importance of seeking professional advice before making costly decisions. He emphasizes the critical role of geotechnical engineers, contrasting their rigorous analysis with the more sales-oriented approach of some foundation repair companies. Listeners will learn about the common pitfalls homeowners face, such as assuming all cracks are created equal and the perils of relying solely on contractors for assessments. Bob’s wealth of experience—spanning over three decades—provides valuable insights into how different soil types can affect foundation stability and why understanding your specific situation is paramount to protecting your home. If you're a homeowner or thinking about buying, this episode is a must-listen!
Takeaways:
- Understanding your home's foundation issues is crucial, especially when it comes to preventing costly repairs down the line.
- Homeowners should always consult a licensed engineer before taking any foundation repair advice from salespeople.
- Foundation repair myths abound, and it's essential to get accurate information to avoid being misled.
- Moisture levels around your foundation can significantly impact its stability, so keep an eye on drainage and landscaping.
- Not all cracks in your foundation signify disaster; some can be normal, but it's best to have them assessed professionally.
- Investing in a good geotechnical engineer can save you money and ensure that repairs are done right the first time.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Monument Grills
- foundationrepairsecrets.com
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Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:The House with Eric G.
Speaker B:Your go to source for everything home improvement.
Speaker B:Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just looking to make your space shine, Eric G.
Speaker B:Is here to guide you through the latest tips, tricks and trends coming up in this week's first hour of the show.
Speaker B:Eric G.
Speaker B:Is a bit under the weather this week, so he is resting up for next week's show.
Speaker B:Now let's revisit an older episode with RK Bob Brown, the Dirt Whisperer.
Speaker B:Now let's talk about foundations.
Speaker C:Really, the reason why you're calling somebody for analysis is you want, you have questions.
Speaker C:You want to know how bad is it going to get worse?
Speaker C:What happens if I do nothing?
Speaker C:You have all these questions.
Speaker C:Well, you're going to get those answers to questions from a foundation salesperson one way.
Speaker C:You're going to get them another way from a licensed professional engineer who has no axe to grind, who has nothing to sell you more.
Speaker B:So grab your toolbox, put on your thinking cap and let's get to work right here on around the House with.
Speaker A:Eric G.
Speaker A:Welcome to the Round the House show, the next generation of home improvement.
Speaker A:I'm Eric G.
Speaker A:This hour is brought to you by our friends at Monument Grills.
Speaker A:If you're looking for that brand new barbecue, check them out@monumentgrills.com well, this is going to be an episode that if you're a homeowner, and most of you are, this is one you don't want to miss because we are going to dive deep into foundation repair, pull the curtains back and talk about it today.
Speaker A:And I have the ultimate guest here today, RK Bob Brown, the Dirt Whisperer.
Speaker A:He's read a book that you gotta check out, foundation repair secrets.
Speaker A:Bob welcome back to around the House Brother.
Speaker C:Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker C:I'm glad to be here, man.
Speaker A:You are singing my song.
Speaker A:I love what you're doing out there because there is this dark underworld of foundation repair and I don't want to go out and hammer on an industry out there.
Speaker A:There's a lot of great people out there, but there's also a lot of one, a lot of people out there that are making millions of dollars a year with fear and lack of knowledge of homeowners and they're getting rich off an unfortunate situation.
Speaker C:That's exactly right.
Speaker A:It's just shocking how much it is.
Speaker A:We see people out there with the duct cleaning and that kind of stuff.
Speaker A:But I think our number one thing that's fleecing homeowners these days is broken foundations, cracks in the foundation or even water in the basement.
Speaker A:And I love what you've been doing, and it seemed like you've been doing this for a long time.
Speaker C:Yeah, 35 years.
Speaker C:And there's.
Speaker C:There is a tremendous.
Speaker C:As you pointed out, there's a tremendous amount of myths in this business, and we can talk about some of those.
Speaker C:We won't get through them all because it'd be like trying to drink through a fire hose.
Speaker C:But if anybody wants to sign up for my newsletter, foundationrepairsecrets.com you can get a copy of the 15 Myths of Foundation repair and real estate, and also the 10 most common mistakes that people make with foundation repair.
Speaker C:And that'll help you out here, because I know a lot of your head's gonna be swimming by the time we get through here.
Speaker A:Yeah, guys.
Speaker A:And this is an amazing resource.
Speaker A:Check it out, because there is so much information over there, as we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker A:I used to work for a foundation repair company for a while, and this is an amazing resource.
Speaker A:Before you have anybody come out and talk to you at your house, check into this stuff, because this is gonna save you a ton of money.
Speaker A:We've seen in my area here.
Speaker A:Great example, Bob.
Speaker A:We have a bunch of homes here in my Portland, Oregon, metro area that the city of Portland did a disservice to.
Speaker A: to: Speaker A:And then about 30 or 40 years ago, they realized that all the storm drains coming off of people's gutters that they put into the sewer system, it was overwhelming the sewer system when you get our rains.
Speaker A:So they paid people with tax rebates to disconnect those downspouts and drop those.
Speaker A:Didn't tell them they had to do it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They just capped off the.
Speaker A:Put a lead seal and capped off the sewer drain there and dropped them right next to the foundation.
Speaker A:Now we got 100,000 plus homes out there with foundation issues.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Water is a catalyst for sure.
Speaker A:It is shocking.
Speaker A:I have been down in these homes before, and I could get down there with a ballpoint pen, and if I took 15 minutes, I could dig through to the exterior of the house.
Speaker A:It's shocking.
Speaker A:With what One of the biggest myths out there that I think we see is people go, oh, dirt's dirt.
Speaker A:Doesn't matter.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:Let's talk about it.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:It's a huge issue.
Speaker C:It's a lot more complicated than people realize because dirt gets deposited in layers and These layers, there could be 10, 20, 30 layers within a 30 foot depth.
Speaker C:And each of them is a different mineral content, different affinities for water, different densities, different reactions to water.
Speaker C:And they're not even layers.
Speaker C:Some are fat, some are skinny, they move, they die out.
Speaker C:There's rocks, it's very complicated.
Speaker C:And there's a lot of things going on in each of these layers all at the same time.
Speaker C:So that's why you really need geotechnical engineers.
Speaker C:They understand this better than anybody else.
Speaker A:Well, I think one of the worst things is if you have a fat layer of clay on one side of the house and not on the other side.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:You've got that ground expanding and contracting, but at way too different rates, which leads to foundation issues.
Speaker C:Yep, that's right.
Speaker C:Clays can be a very problematic source of problems.
Speaker C:And as you mentioned, they, they can contract and expand.
Speaker C:If you have wet and dry seasons, the key is changes in moisture.
Speaker C:If you see a change in moisture, you're going to have problems.
Speaker C:If you have clays, it's one of.
Speaker A:The things that happens around my area.
Speaker A:In the summertime here we have, we are very much a wet and dry season.
Speaker A:Summertime, it's totally dry.
Speaker A:We don't get rain and people's yards.
Speaker A:You'll see the cracks in the clay.
Speaker A:It looks like a dry lake bed.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker A:So I've been out with engineers and said, hey, can you make sure and water your flower beds around the outside of your lawn?
Speaker A:It's probably going to save your foundation or at least help it.
Speaker C:You know, that's interesting because that's what they do in Houston now in Phoenix, where it's a desert, you would never do that.
Speaker C:So you have to talk to the engineers and see what their recommendations are for that.
Speaker C:Because regionally they're going to change depending on annual rainfall, depending on soil conditions, depending on a lot of things.
Speaker C:And you can save yourself a lot of trouble just with a smart conversation with a good geotechnical engineer and listen to their recommendations.
Speaker A:That has always been my first thing.
Speaker A:If you notice cracks in your foundation, cracks in the drywall, doors and stuff not opening, I've always said before, you call that foundation company, call the engineer first and get their recommendations.
Speaker C:What do you think about that?
Speaker C:That is my number one recommendation and I'll tell you why.
Speaker C:There's a bunch of reasons.
Speaker C:But let's just take Susie's Q homeowner.
Speaker C:She calls out three contractors.
Speaker C:One contractor says, oh, you need 15 peers on this side of the house.
Speaker C:The other one Says, you need.
Speaker C:Oh, no, you need 12 on this side of the house.
Speaker C:And the other one says, no, you need 25 all the way around.
Speaker C:Now, as a homeowner, how would you know?
Speaker C:You don't.
Speaker C:You're not a professional.
Speaker C:You have no idea.
Speaker C:And that's what these companies bank on.
Speaker C:They're banking on the fact that their proposal is different so they don't have to compare apples to apples.
Speaker C:And so then in the end, you just end up going with the guy you're most comfortable with, which is the best salesman, which probably is the least qualified to act as an engineer, because that's what these sales consultants are doing.
Speaker C:They're doing geotechnical and structural engineering without a license.
Speaker C:Basically, yeah.
Speaker A:And if you've got a clay soil issue, maybe those piles are not the answer.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:It could be a heat problem and it may not need underpinning at all.
Speaker C:You may just need to fix the drainage.
Speaker C:There's lots of things.
Speaker C:I need to monitor it.
Speaker C:One of the, one of the myths is, ah, we got cracks, we gotta underpin it right away.
Speaker C:No, that's not true.
Speaker C:You can monitor it.
Speaker C:Get a good geotechnical engineer, a forensic engineer out there.
Speaker C:He may say, hey, yeah, you've got some problems, but it's not the end of the world.
Speaker C:Or, hey, let's monitor it for six months to a year and see how much it's still moving.
Speaker C:It may be all done moving.
Speaker C:Those are the kinds of things that you're going to get from engineers.
Speaker C:Now, engineer is not going to be free.
Speaker C:Foundation repair companies, they're going to send out their analysis, which is basically a sales pitch disguised as analysis for free.
Speaker C:But look at it this way.
Speaker C:Would you go to a doctor and pay good money if you had a serious problem, or would you go for free to a pharmaceutical rep?
Speaker C:That's about what it turns into.
Speaker A:You're right.
Speaker C:And you know what?
Speaker C:If you get a good geotechnical engineer and he says, okay, yeah, it's still moving, yeah, we need to fix it, we need to underpin it.
Speaker C:Now he'll say, he'll give you a plan that says, put in 13 peers right here.
Speaker C:No more, no less.
Speaker C:Well, now, that's right.
Speaker C:And you can go get that three bids, and guess what?
Speaker C:All those guys are going to sharpen their pencil because they know they're bidding apples to apples.
Speaker C:You're probably going to save the money that you spent and more with the engineer.
Speaker A:And the beautiful thing is, if you go to sell that house one day, you go, here's the engineer's report stamped, and here's the fix that I had done.
Speaker A:It is good to gold versus the foundation salesperson talked me into doing.
Speaker C:Well.
Speaker C:And let me tell you, all these foundation repair companies, they give a lifetime warranty, right?
Speaker C:That's not worth the paper it's written on.
Speaker C:There are so many get out of jail free cards in that thing.
Speaker C:I'll give you an example.
Speaker C:So five years later, the homeowner calls the contractor and says, hello, yeah, my house is cracking all up again.
Speaker C:Your foundation fix isn't working.
Speaker C:Come out here and honor your lifetime warranty.
Speaker C:So then the foundation repair salesman or contractor sends out a really experienced guy, and he says, oh, well, this problem is from heave.
Speaker C:And it says right here in our contract that our peers can't fix Heave.
Speaker C:So, hey, have a nice life.
Speaker C:And the whole one is, oh, now what?
Speaker C:And if they're really smart, they might go, hey, wait, wait.
Speaker C:If it's heave, didn't you diagnose it wrong in the first place?
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker C:And the contractor says, hey, what do we know?
Speaker C:We're not engineers.
Speaker C:We're just stupid contractors.
Speaker C:See ya.
Speaker A:It's like house inspections.
Speaker A:When you're going through buying a house and the realtor or wherever you're located has the house inspector go through their liability is the price generally of the price that you paid for the house inspection, they'll give you the 500 bucks back.
Speaker A:Doesn't do any good for the issue.
Speaker C:Yeah, it doesn't cover the problem.
Speaker A:Doesn't cover the problem.
Speaker A:My favorite one here is all the foundation companies in my area because we do have earthquakes from time to time.
Speaker A:Anytime there's a 1.0 and higher, those guys are out buying everybody drinks because it just reset all their warranties out there.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Seismic activity.
Speaker C:Yep, that's right.
Speaker C:Even though there's a lot more than that, too.
Speaker C:There's a ton of get out of jail free cards.
Speaker C:They only warranty the areas they peer.
Speaker C:As you pointed out, the best thing is to have an engineer seal.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:It's crazy.
Speaker A:It's crazy.
Speaker A:And let's talk about what cracks are here.
Speaker A:And let's start over at the beginning here, because so many people go walking around the house, maybe they're doing some landscaping the spring, and they're like, oh, wow, I got a crawl space or a foundation vent or a window.
Speaker A:On Arizona, you don't have too many of those.
Speaker A:But there are some other parts of the country, like here, where we have lots of crawl spaces and basements.
Speaker A:And you see Those cracks reading out of the corners, and people go into panic mode and they don't know what to deal with.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:And it's absolutely true.
Speaker C:And the last thing you want is somebody saying to you, oh, yeah, on a scale of 1 to 10, this is an 8.5.
Speaker C:And you're thinking, because really, the reason why you're calling somebody for analysis is you want.
Speaker C:You have questions.
Speaker C:You want to know, how bad is it going to get worse?
Speaker C:What happens if I do nothing?
Speaker C:You have all these questions.
Speaker C:Well, you're going to get those answers to questions from a foundation salesperson one way.
Speaker C:You're going to get him another way from a licensed professional engineer who has no ax to grind, who has nothing to sell you more other than just trying to make sure he does the right thing for you.
Speaker C:After all, he's governed by the board of technical registration.
Speaker C:So if he does something wrong, people can haul his buns up there to the registrar and say, hey, this guy's acting unethically, or he.
Speaker C:He's acting outside of his area of experience.
Speaker C:What do you.
Speaker C:What kind of oversight do you have for foundation repair salespeople?
Speaker A:Nothing.
Speaker A:And what I don't like, and this is where I think homeowners become the victim here, is I see a lot of great people out there that are going in and doing it honestly.
Speaker A:But in my area, there's a couple companies here that are the ultimate of arm twisting.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker A:Go around, do the report.
Speaker A:They print it out in the car, come in, and you're there for 90 minutes.
Speaker A:Here in the pitch, 35% off if you sign today.
Speaker C:Oh, more than 90 minutes.
Speaker C:Sometimes there for three hours.
Speaker A:It gets crazy, and the homeowner is totally scared, and they got to think about.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:What to do and.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:It's absolutely insane.
Speaker C:As long as we're talking about engineers, let me and.
Speaker C:And warranties, let me bring.
Speaker C:Let me bring up one more important point.
Speaker C:One of the.
Speaker C:One of the pernicious mistruths that is told out there is that, hey, don't worry, when we pull permits, we're going to have the engineer look this over and make sure everything's good.
Speaker C:That is absolutely not true.
Speaker C:And I'll tell you why.
Speaker C:Because an engineer cannot put his seal to anything that he did not gather the data for, or somebody under his direct employee gathered the data for, which means if somebody from another company gathered the data, the engineer cannot put his seal to it.
Speaker C:So, in fact, when you go to pull permits, the only requirement that the city has for the engineer to put his seal to is a spacing calculation for piers.
Speaker C:All they want to do is make sure you're not putting them too far apart so that the house droops between the piers.
Speaker C:It's not that hard to do.
Speaker C:A monkey could do that calculation.
Speaker C:It's super easy.
Speaker C:Most of the time it's either 6ft or 8ft, unless it's a really old house without rebar in the footings or something.
Speaker C:But the fact of the matter is, you could have piers on the wrong side of the house.
Speaker C:You could have too many piers.
Speaker C:You could have piers that aren't needed at all.
Speaker C:There's nothing in the Permian process that corrects for any of those errors at all.
Speaker C:And the engineer will not be able to fix any of those because he did not gather the data, he didn't understand the problem, and he didn't design the fix to the problem.
Speaker C:Let me give you an example.
Speaker C:I had a homeowner up here in Show Low who they had a block stem wall that never got grouted, and it had moved out from the house, and the house was sitting on like, the.
Speaker C:The last inch and a half of block.
Speaker C:And so the foundation company told her, oh, yeah, when we underpinned this, we're going to rotate that right back into place.
Speaker C:Well, they underpinned it and it didn't rotate back into place.
Speaker C:And so then they.
Speaker C:And they pulled a permit.
Speaker C:They had an engineer put a seal on the drawings, the whole ball of wax.
Speaker C:But when she said, hey, the reason I called you is for this.
Speaker C:Can you.
Speaker C:What happened?
Speaker C:And they're like, well, if you really want that fixed, we're going to have to hire a mason contractor.
Speaker C:It's going to cost you another $27,000.
Speaker C:And she's.
Speaker C:So I called the engineer, I said, hey, so what's the deal?
Speaker C:How come you didn't address this problem?
Speaker C:And he's.
Speaker C:I didn't even know about that problem.
Speaker C:They just told me they wanted peers at a certain spot, and I did the spacing calc.
Speaker C:And that's exactly what happens.
Speaker A:Ah, that's brutal.
Speaker A:And I tell you what, I have had more issues, especially in my area where it's wet with CMU block foundations like that, concrete block foundations.
Speaker A:Because many times here in our area, when they built these homes, especially 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, whatever they were, the inside of those hollow blocks didn't get filled up.
Speaker A:And so you can have a leak someplace on the other side of the house.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker A:And it just leaks through and comes out on the other side of the house over there.
Speaker A:The only way you can waterproof that foundation is from the outside, because otherwise you're chasing it forever.
Speaker A:It's impossible.
Speaker C:Right, I agree.
Speaker A:It's just every time I see those, I go, oh, man, if that thing starts leaking, it's an excavation project.
Speaker A:It is a problem.
Speaker A:So what do you see out there when.
Speaker A:What.
Speaker A:What's the best mode for people to go down when they go, okay, I think I have a problem.
Speaker A:Whether it's a house sinking or appears to be sinking or any of these kind of problems with foundation issues.
Speaker A:Of course, we start out with the engineer, but is there anything people should be looking for when they're out finding, looking for that contractor out there that you recommend?
Speaker C:Well, let me just say this because I like to beat on the industry a lot, but the fact of the matter is that most of the time when somebody's putting in peers, they're doing a pretty good job.
Speaker C:The peers are good products for the most part, and the contractors putting them in do a pretty good job.
Speaker C:I'm not saying they're perfect, but they do a pretty good job.
Speaker C:And honestly, the thing that you need to be careful of is the diagnosis once you get a plan.
Speaker C:One of the things that I would do, because most of the time, city inspectors don't really understand what's going on with this kind of stuff.
Speaker C:And so then they hire.
Speaker C:They want you to hire a special inspector.
Speaker C:Well, a lot of times the city leaves it up the contractor to hire their own special inspector.
Speaker C:Well, that's like the fox guarding the henhouse.
Speaker C:That's dumb.
Speaker C:Why would you do that?
Speaker C:The better way is to have the engineer that designs the plan be the special inspector.
Speaker C:He's the one that holds the contractor accountable.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker C:And if the contractor doesn't get something right, he's going to insist because he's going to put his seal on it.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And guess what?
Speaker C:Here's what happens.
Speaker C:A lot of times you get halfway through the project, and what happens, oh, Mr.
Speaker C:Jones.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:We're going to need to add five more peers to your project.
Speaker A:How's the homeowner know that?
Speaker A:They're like, you have no idea.
Speaker C:If they push back and go, well, no, I don't want to add five peers.
Speaker C:Then the contractor says, well, okay, then we can't warranty your project.
Speaker C:Oh, no, okay, well, I'll spend the extra $25,000.
Speaker C:And the fact of the matter is, if you have an engineer who designed the plan, and now the contractor comes and says, hey, we need to add five Peers.
Speaker C:And the engineer is going to say, all right, hog breath, explain this to me.
Speaker C:Justify it to me.
Speaker C:They're going to be a lot more careful.
Speaker C:And you got somebody that knows what they're doing, watching out for change orders that are not authorized.
Speaker C:I'd say, at least in my area of experience, half the projects that get installed have change orders.
Speaker A:That's incredible.
Speaker A:You think about how many change orders that is because they dive into it, and all of a sudden it's way worse.
Speaker C:Yeah, well, you know, the sales guy missed something.
Speaker C:Whatever.
Speaker C:I mean, it happens all the time.
Speaker C:I can tell you from the inside, after owning a foundation repair business and a forensic engineering business, that I hear stories.
Speaker C:I still hear stories.
Speaker C:I still have friends that I know that own foundation repair companies in the business.
Speaker C:And they.
Speaker C:The stories just go on and on about they get out to the job, and it's, what the hell?
Speaker C:So the sales guy, he totally missed it.
Speaker C:Now we got to come up with a totally different plan.
Speaker C:It happens a lot.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:I was going to ask you, what do you see out there with technology and stuff?
Speaker A:There's lots of different ways to fix concrete now, and we're seeing more and more from trees getting bigger and other environmental things outside of the house.
Speaker A:We're seeing those Boeing foundations where you got horizontal cracks, things like that.
Speaker A:What is your favorite way to deal with that?
Speaker A:And of course, that's not.
Speaker A:There's not a one fix all.
Speaker A:But what's your favorite way?
Speaker C:Honestly, if you're going to put a pier in the ground to fix a foundation, a helical pier or a push pier, you could do a micropile, but nobody's going to do that.
Speaker C:Nobody's going to spend that kind of money unless you're in a really rocky situation.
Speaker C:I have a friend who owns a business up there in Reno, and it's all rock, so that's mostly what they do.
Speaker C:But other than that, push piers, helical piers are going to work great.
Speaker C:The question is, is that fix the problem if you've got a heat problem?
Speaker C:Well, now what?
Speaker C:Well, I developed a patented system that dries out the clays underneath the foundation called the moisture level system, and it runs air through the gravel layer that's right under the concrete, and then it dries out those clays over time.
Speaker C:And the idea is to keep them from.
Speaker C:To stop them from swelling.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And it does work.
Speaker C:It removed about 26 gallons of water every day on the average.
Speaker C:Pretty good little system.
Speaker C:Another innovation that I'm working on is interior floor Slab.
Speaker C:If you want to raise up an interior floor slab, let's say it's on clays and you don't want to put a foam underneath there.
Speaker C:Well, you raise it up with foam and now those clays get wet.
Speaker C:Oh, man.
Speaker C:Now you're going to really heave like crazy.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So that's a scary situation.
Speaker C:You don't want to do that.
Speaker C:But if you have to put in piers, you have to core in 8 inch holes in the slab every 4ft on center.
Speaker C:You just destroyed the integrity of the slab.
Speaker C:And you spent about $300,000 just to raise up a floor slab.
Speaker C:Nobody's going to do that.
Speaker C:Well, I've developed a system where you can core an inch and a half hole and use that to raise up a slab.
Speaker C:Super cheap battery driven equipment, no hydraulics needed and super cheap, super fast.
Speaker C:And stay tuned, we're doing the testing on this system right now.
Speaker A:That is awesome.
Speaker A:That is awesome.
Speaker A:You just reminded me of the worst foundation nightmare I had walked into.
Speaker A:And you've probably seen this before, but for me is only a couple of years in the industry.
Speaker A:Somebody had put in a trough drain system around the house, one of those systems around the basement.
Speaker A:And they kept going through sump pumps, but they were going through good sump pumps like zoellers every couple of years.
Speaker A:And I'm like, oh, something's up.
Speaker A:So go in there and I look it up and I'm like, well, you got a lot of dirt in the bottom of this.
Speaker A:So I went around and peeled stuff back, put my inspection cam under the foundation wall and they had a 12 by 24 inch void under the entire foundation wall.
Speaker A: This: Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Water had been coming in underneath that and just washing it out.
Speaker A:Yeah, washing it out.
Speaker A:So the only thing holding up this was the tension from the dirt outside and the slab that was holding things, were they there?
Speaker A:And I just went, man, you got a huge problem here and you need to go talk to an engineer and an attorney at the same time.
Speaker C:Yep, exactly right.
Speaker A:Because you got a big problem.
Speaker A:Because.
Speaker A:What do you mean?
Speaker A:I go look at my camera right here and that inspection camera told so many things.
Speaker A:I'm like, there is.
Speaker A:Your house is floating on air right now and if we have a small earthquake, those posts are on the slab.
Speaker A:So it's going to push up that foot.
Speaker A:So you're going to have a serious problem.
Speaker A:And I didn't, don't know what happened after that, but I felt bad because that was probably house that needed a new foundation.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And That's a total rebuild.
Speaker C:You know, that's not a cheap fix.
Speaker A:You know, I've done in the past on those situations.
Speaker A:I don't know if you've ever done this before.
Speaker A:We did new interior foundations.
Speaker A:Have you ever seen that done?
Speaker C:Yeah, I haven't done too much of that.
Speaker C:One of the things that we did is we used a modified push pier and drove it down on the interior in the crawl space.
Speaker C:And that worked pretty dang good.
Speaker C:Yeah, nice.
Speaker A:We've done those in the past where it's a.
Speaker A:Maybe a historical building and it's brick on the outside and it's all coming apart.
Speaker A:And you still try to head instead of them coming in and lifting the house up and doing the brick, because it was historical, doing it on the inside to do it.
Speaker A:But the problem is one, you got to gut the house down there, take all the H vac or whatever's in the basement, and it's a quite the big project.
Speaker A:But better than jacking the house up and moving everybody out of the house, right?
Speaker C:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:What do you think of carbon fiber as a repair tool out there for cracks?
Speaker A:Have you used that a lot?
Speaker C:Sure, yeah.
Speaker C:Carbon fiber is a great tool.
Speaker C:You just got to know when to use it.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Sometimes people think it's great for everything, and it's not.
Speaker C:It's a very Strong product.
Speaker C:It's 10 times stronger than steel for the weight, and it works great.
Speaker C:I have a 3D printer that prints 3D carbon fiber pieces, and that's for another system that I'm working on.
Speaker C:But yeah, it's great.
Speaker C:I used it in slabs a lot.
Speaker C:So I would use a laminate, which is like a 16th of an inch by 18 inches long by 2 inches tall.
Speaker C:And it's extruded, so it's more carbon fiber than epoxy, which, strangely enough, makes it stronger.
Speaker C:Because the carbon fiber is stronger than the epoxy.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker C:So when you extrude it, you get about seven times the strength of regular carbon fiber.
Speaker C:And what you do is if you have a crack that snakes across the floor, you saw cut these channels in and you just slip them in.
Speaker C:The old way is to cut it a 1 inch, chisel it out, throw a rebar in there, and epoxy it in.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's really a really difficult and odd.
Speaker C:We would just saw, cut it, slide these in, and we would use a polyurea instead of an epoxy.
Speaker C:And a polyurea sets up very quickly.
Speaker C:And it's so thin, it's like thinner than water almost.
Speaker C:It's about the same, I think, 20 center poise.
Speaker C:And it soaks into the concrete around it when it goes into to the channels and creates a bond that is super, super strong.
Speaker C:And epoxy is stronger than polyureas, but it doesn't go into the pores.
Speaker C:And so you have a failure of adhesion.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:You can grab 10 times the concrete.
Speaker C:Right, right.
Speaker C:And the key is to put these in, not parallel, but skew them, and that way they can't slide.
Speaker C:And I'm gonna tell you, that's a great system.
Speaker C:It's worked great.
Speaker C:I had very few problems with those over 35 years.
Speaker A:All you're doing is basically stitching it back together.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:That is brilliant.
Speaker A:That is brilliant.
Speaker A:I've used a couple times, I've used the little barbell, you know, the staples, that stuff before.
Speaker A:And those worked.
Speaker A:Okay, but your system is way better than that.
Speaker C:Yeah, I know what your system you're referring to.
Speaker C:They copied my system.
Speaker A:Did they?
Speaker A:Okay, that's probably where they got it.
Speaker A:I get it.
Speaker A:Yeah, those crazy Canadians.
Speaker A:But I've used it a few times, and there's a product that I've been using.
Speaker A:I did it on one project.
Speaker A:It was probably the hardest material I've ever worked with.
Speaker A:And Simpson strong tie had came out with it.
Speaker A:And I don't know if you've seen this before out there.
Speaker A:It is a.
Speaker A:If you've got a.
Speaker A:Like a brick building and you want to make it where.
Speaker A:Or a brick foundation.
Speaker A:You want to make it so it's going to hold up to an earthquake.
Speaker A:There's that carbon fiber spray that they spray on with.
Speaker A:It's got carbon fiber concrete.
Speaker A:And then they put a carbon fiber mesh on it.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah.
Speaker C:And so then they plaster it to the wall.
Speaker C:There's a good case for that because what it does is it puts everything in confinement and hold and keeps it all together.
Speaker C:So I would say that if it's done right, that's probably a good system.
Speaker C:But really, to be done right, you need to do it on both sides, which is probably hard to do.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I tell you what, there is not a harder material I've ever worked with than that.
Speaker C:Yeah, I can believe that.
Speaker A:Get the mix incorrectly.
Speaker A:And that carbon fiber being so fibrous, it loves to plug everything up.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker A:We sat outside for about eight hours one day with the right sprayer and everything else, and I'm like, this is the most frustrating product I've ever worked with.
Speaker A:And I'm sure they've got it better now as when it was first coming on the market.
Speaker A:So this was a number of years ago, but anytime that we can come up with a product that's going to help people in earthquake or hurricane areas like that to be able to hold up to older brick buildings, I think it's great.
Speaker C:I think, speaking of that, quite often have you been to a.
Speaker C:Like a stem wall, you see a horizontal crack right above the dirt.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:And that is the rebar rusting.
Speaker C:It's called rust jacking.
Speaker C:And so what you really need to do is take that rebar out and put a composite rebar in its place, which is easy to do.
Speaker C:Anybody can do it, Right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:But now what do you do when you get to the hold down straps?
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Because those are made of galvanized.
Speaker C:They're steel with a little galvanized coating on them.
Speaker C:And that galvanized coating is gone after two years.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker C:And now those straps are super thin.
Speaker C:I've never seen any of them last more than a couple of years.
Speaker C:And how do you replace them?
Speaker C:Well, that means if it's a frame stucco house, you got to go up the stucco, peel back the lath and the wire, remove the old strap, put a new strap in, put the wire and paper back, stucco it to match.
Speaker C:Hard to do.
Speaker C:Paint it to match.
Speaker C:Hard to do.
Speaker C:And then put all that back in and hope that it lasts another three years, which is crazy.
Speaker C:What I did is I developed the carbon fiber product called the Never Rust that goes from the underside.
Speaker C:It has screws that go up through the base plate and into the studs on an angle.
Speaker C:They cross each other and then it hangs down inside the concrete.
Speaker C:And the fiberglass rebar that runs through it has holes that runs through it.
Speaker C:So now the rebar, the fiberglass rebar is part of the hold down system.
Speaker C:And really slick, really sharp.
Speaker C:And I'm hoping that as people start to realize that this is a problem that they'll figure out this is a.
Speaker A:Good solution for it, especially in coastal areas where it's not even going to last that long.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Get that salt water out there.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker A:That galvanized doesn't have.
Speaker A:There's a reason why roofing companies say in coastal areas to use stainless steel nails because of one.
Speaker A:And then you want to use something structural that is brilliant and it doesn't care if it's salt water or not.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:That makes no difference, right, Bob, you've.
Speaker A:Got your hands in about everything with foundations.
Speaker A:I love it, man.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:One of the things That I think is problematic.
Speaker A:And I'm going to set this up with real estate professionals, our real estate professionals out there.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker A:I have a picture that I wiped the real estate agent's name off.
Speaker A:There was a crack in this old house foundation that someone had nicely painted up to look really pretty, that I could put my fingers in the hole all the way down.
Speaker A:And they had printed up a nice little sign that says, this crack has been here for the entire lifetime of the house, has caused no problems.
Speaker A:And I'm like, yeah, really?
Speaker C:I, you know, I do the training for home inspectors, for realtors, for their license renewals.
Speaker C:And the first thing I tell realtors is, never opine about any crack.
Speaker C:Never try to characterize it.
Speaker C:Never try to say it's normal.
Speaker C:Never.
Speaker C:Don't talk about that.
Speaker C:I had one realtor say, well, if a crack is horizontal, it's bad.
Speaker C:If it's stairstep, it's normal.
Speaker C:I'm like, don't be doing that.
Speaker C:That's putting your livelihood at risk.
Speaker C:Don't opine about that.
Speaker C:The best thing, the best advice I give to realtors is, hey, look, if you're starting to list a house and you walk around in cracks, doors that are pinched, fat on one side, pinched on the other, sloping floors, windows that maybe might be pinched.
Speaker C:If you see this in a pattern, in a grouping, don't try to sneak through the escrow, because what's going to happen is you're going to get an inspector that calls it out, and guess what?
Speaker C:Then they're going to call a foundation repair company.
Speaker C:Because that's when you Google it, that's who comes up.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:In a hurry, 60 come out, and they're going to say, yeah, you need $60,000 in peers.
Speaker C:And then the whole escrow blows apart.
Speaker C:Everybody goes their separate ways.
Speaker C:And guess what?
Speaker C:The listing agent gets fired.
Speaker C:And I'll tell you why they get fired.
Speaker C:Because the homeowner cannot ask the listing agent to lie about it.
Speaker C:So they fire the listing agent.
Speaker C:They go in and patch everything up the best they can.
Speaker C:They hire a new listing agent.
Speaker C:That's not the right way to do it.
Speaker C:The best way is for the listing agent.
Speaker C:You see these problems.
Speaker C:Get to know some good forensic engineers in your area.
Speaker C:And if you go to my website, Foundation Repair Secrets, there's a directory of engineers for every state.
Speaker C:Go into that directory and find some good engineers.
Speaker C:Get to know them, take them to lunch, get their opinion.
Speaker C:And then when the time is right, you can call on them to come out and take a look.
Speaker C:At this.
Speaker C:And they'll do one of two things.
Speaker C:They'll say, it's probably fine, and here's a seal.
Speaker C:Or they may say, oh, yeah, we might need to fix it.
Speaker C:Oh, and here's a plan.
Speaker C:Now you can get it fixed, and he'll supervise it, make sure it's done, put a seal on the end.
Speaker C:And now when the inspector brings these problems up, you have a seal either way that says it's groovy and all.
Speaker A:Those fears are alleviated.
Speaker A:It always seems it's that inspection process, right, that this stuff comes up.
Speaker A:And there's this.
Speaker A:When I was working for that foundation company, we had two people that were in sales that just dealt with realtors.
Speaker A:It was just.
Speaker A:You didn't know where you're going tomorrow, but it was like you were filling in, just going, yeah.
Speaker C:And usually what happens is foundation repair companies have figured out that very few of those turn into sales.
Speaker C:So what they do is they charge for those appointments, which is crazy because now they're really violating engineering laws.
Speaker C:They're providing engineering advice for a price.
Speaker C:And you know what?
Speaker C:They're gonna go out there and they're gonna give you a little report with pictures and an estimate and a plan, maybe even a floor level, if you're lucky, floor level survey.
Speaker C:But no, nothing written.
Speaker C:No opinions written, because that would just be too scary for them to do, right?
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Doing, you know, doing brain surgery in a storage unit.
Speaker C:Yeah, right.
Speaker C:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:Shouldn't be happening.
Speaker A:Shouldn't be happening.
Speaker A:And that's the bad part with.
Speaker A:And I wanted to talk about this, too, and it's something that's going around out there with these foundation repair companies.
Speaker A:Many times the ones with the biggest advertising budget that show up on the Google searches with all the paid ads are showing up on your.
Speaker A:Maybe they're not the ones you're supposed to call.
Speaker C:Well, that's exactly right.
Speaker C:Think about it.
Speaker C:There's been a big thing going on in the industry where private equity companies, or even just large companies, have been going around and buying up small mom and pops.
Speaker C:Well, guess what?
Speaker C:You got a problem with the mom and pop.
Speaker C:They're probably going to listen to you.
Speaker C:I owned a company for 35 years.
Speaker C:I sold two years ago, and I see the way the company behaves now versus when it was my company.
Speaker C:Big difference.
Speaker C:You're a big company and you're millions or billions of dollars in sales all over America.
Speaker C:You're not going to really care that much about some dinky little homeowner that's not happy it's just not going to happen.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Where you're losing a $30,000 deal due to a complaint, something like that.
Speaker A:You have Mr.
Speaker A:And Mrs.
Speaker A:Homeowner upset and that business owner is all over it because that one Google review could kill them.
Speaker C:And think about it.
Speaker C:Let's just suppose that you decide to sue the company, okay?
Speaker C:Now if you're suing a mall and pop, they're going to take it seriously.
Speaker C:You're suing a billion dollar company.
Speaker C:They don't care.
Speaker C:They're going to drag it out for four years and make and grind you down with $300,000 in expert testimony.
Speaker C:They don't care.
Speaker C:No.
Speaker A:And they got their own legal team that's on staff.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:They're going to spend your money.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:You know, absolutely insane how bad that goes.
Speaker A:It's just crazy.
Speaker A:And so that's one of the things that's a little disheartening about.
Speaker A:That out there is much more about the mom and pops than some of these bigger companies.
Speaker A:So just because they show up at the top of your Google search doesn't always mean they're the right company.
Speaker C:Yep, I would agree with that 100%.
Speaker A:What other advice can you give to people, Bob, about maybe exploring foundation issues on their home or at least maintaining that foundation when they're a homeowner, walking around and keeping an eye on things?
Speaker C:Well, the name of the game is changes in moisture, okay?
Speaker C:So what you want to do is try to keep moisture as constant as you can.
Speaker C:So if you're in a dry area, you want to keep it dry.
Speaker C:If you're in a wet area, you want to keep it wet.
Speaker C:Now the problem is, what do you do in an area that's wet half the time and dry half the time?
Speaker C:You want to try to even that out.
Speaker C:I had a house in Flagstaff, which is northern Arizona, very snowy, big pine trees and a lot of clays.
Speaker C:There's a volcano there or a dead volcano.
Speaker C:And the problem was, to make a long story short, the problem was that in the winter, the snows would come, they would melt, the water would go underneath the house and wet all those clays.
Speaker C:And in the summertime, there was these huge trees that would suck all that soil back out.
Speaker C:So there was this huge action going on.
Speaker C:And to boot, this happens a lot.
Speaker C:They put the guttering system in and they piped it down into a perforated drying drain.
Speaker C:They wanted.
Speaker C:They wanted to make the French drain and the drain for the gutters all in one, which is okay.
Speaker A:We're going to just put a super highway down to the drain.
Speaker C:Awesome.
Speaker C:A super high pressure injection system.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:You know, and that just made it worse.
Speaker C:But bottom line is, one of the things that I developed for this project was a drying system that would go through those sands underneath the house and there would be a switch.
Speaker C:You just flick the switch on in the winter to keep it dry.
Speaker C:You turn it off in the summer and that kept it constant.
Speaker A:That is awesome.
Speaker C:Boy.
Speaker A:Nowadays with smart home tech, you could just put a switch on that.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And say, okay, on December 1st or whatever, that's going to turn on for this many hours a week and.
Speaker C:Oh yeah.
Speaker C:Or you could even make a moisture sensitive switch.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Just like you'd have a bath fan or something.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker A:Simple.
Speaker A:I like it.
Speaker A:That is smart.
Speaker A:And that's one of the things that we see a lot here in our area, because we are that in my area at least that's that six months of the year it's raining.
Speaker A:We're raining here till June and then it's dead dry.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:It's the biggest cause of our foundation issues around here.
Speaker A:And I can just drive down the street and see the white lawns in July and go, problems, problems.
Speaker A:I could be, I could walk down that with door hangers if I was a foundation guy.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:You just know what's going on without even looking at it.
Speaker C:And the shame about that is that half of those problems might be he problems, not settlement problems.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:I had one house that, that I'd seen.
Speaker A:And you could, you probably should write a book on the crazy things you've seen out there with pictures if you've got them.
Speaker C:Oh yeah, sure.
Speaker A:You've got those.
Speaker A:I had one where middle of winter, I got called out and again, this was someone missing.
Speaker A:Maintenance day.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So in, in respect to the homeowner, his kids were living at home and they were adult kids.
Speaker A:He was a long haul truck driver.
Speaker A:So he comes home and goes, what happened to the kitchen?
Speaker A:The refrigerator's bound up against the refrigerator wall.
Speaker A:And I'm like, oh, well, let me get down to the crawl space and take a look.
Speaker A:It's a 30 degree day outside.
Speaker A:I pull the crawl space over, cover off in steam.
Speaker A:I'm just running out.
Speaker A:Oh no.
Speaker A:I got down there in the cast.
Speaker A:Actually.
Speaker A:The galvanized pipe that was coming off the washing machine off the drain had broken and was just.
Speaker A:And they had a 50 gallon washing machine.
Speaker A:It's an old top load.
Speaker A:Every time they do a load of laundry, 50 gallons of hot water go down there.
Speaker A:And there was three feet under the foundation right at the kitchen wall.
Speaker A:And that whole kitchen had just sunk.
Speaker A:You could see it in the roof line.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker A:And for them, I said, you know, a couple things.
Speaker A:I talked to your insurance company first.
Speaker A:That actually might be an insurance issue.
Speaker A:You might be able to get away with that, and that's rare with foundations.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:Well, I'll tell you, I've.
Speaker C:Here's the key.
Speaker C:If you have a floor level survey, you know, as a baseline, and now an event comes along like this and happens, and you can show that, okay, this was sudden and catastrophic.
Speaker C:It occurred after the pipe break.
Speaker C:It was caused by the pipe break.
Speaker C:You can probably have a fighting chance to get the insurance to cover it.
Speaker C:I actually had insurance cover one of my rental houses that way and had all the documentation, had everything planned.
Speaker C:One of the things that we do is we have a software that we provide for both engineers, contractors, and we're starting to train home inspectors that when you take the floor level survey, it pops it right into the computer program and does a colored 3D model that shows you where it's high and where it's low.
Speaker A:Cool.
Speaker C:It's really cool.
Speaker C:And now, guess what?
Speaker C:Five years from now, you can take the first values, subtract them from the second values, and.
Speaker C:And it prints you a model of how it's moved in the intervening time.
Speaker C:And that's super valuable.
Speaker C:And so we're.
Speaker C:We're seeing a lot of people using this technology and benefiting from it.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:And if you do that seasonally, you can really see where shrinkage heaves or whatever else is happening.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Because the old argument is, hey, it's low on this one side.
Speaker C:Well, maybe it was poured that way.
Speaker C:Or how do we know?
Speaker C:Well, guess what?
Speaker C:If six months ago it was this way and now it's this way, you can pretty well see a pattern of what's going on, right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And sometimes dropping down pushes up over here.
Speaker A:And so we get to figure out what's going on.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker C:It's a bit of an art to understand a floor level survey because there's no benchmark.
Speaker C:So all you're doing is looking at relative elevations and trying to figure out, okay, what went up and what went down.
Speaker C:And there's a bit of an art to it.
Speaker C:And, you know, having that first one and the second one really helps with that ambiguity.
Speaker A:Man, that is awesome.
Speaker A:That is awesome.
Speaker A:Well, Bob, we're running out of time, but I want to make sure we cover how to find you how to find all your information because you are my foundation expert out there.
Speaker A:It's so refreshing to find somebody like you out there that really is helping out the consumer and the industry pros out there to be able to do this correctly.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:That's my goal, is to try to help the homeowner get a fair deal.
Speaker C:And if engineers, contractors and home inspectors have better tools, they're going to do a better job.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker C:Best way to reach me is foundationrepairsecrets.com that's the easiest way.
Speaker C:But you can find me all over social media as the Dirt Whisperer and reach out to me.
Speaker C:I'm happy to talk.
Speaker C:I'm, I'm retired, basically.
Speaker C:Almost maybe.
Speaker C:But I'll respond to people all the time that have questions and concerns.
Speaker A:Yeah, you're retired, but you're inventing all these cool things and writing books, right?
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker A:Not sure if that's retirement or not.
Speaker C:I never sit still.
Speaker C:That's the problem.
Speaker A:That's my problem as well.
Speaker A:Bob Brown, thanks for coming on the Dirt Whisper.
Speaker A:I appreciate your time and the education for the audience out there as well.
Speaker C:Awesome.
Speaker C:Glad to be here.
Speaker C:Thanks for having me.
Speaker A:Thanks, brother.
Speaker A:I'm Eric G.
Speaker A:And you've been listening to around the House.
Speaker B:Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker B:Eric G.
Speaker B:Will be back next week all healed up with a brand new show.
Speaker B:You have been listening to the around the House show.
