This hillside foundation is extremely undermined and most of the footings are completely exposed. Some wood blocks were put in place to help support the foundation. Check out the shoring put in place, though! This place needs some foundation work and hillside compaction for sure!

This post was installed for your sins

Not a very safe sidewalk if you ask me.

This was a brick retaining wall we inspected that had major fracturing going on. Needs to be demolished and replaced! Plenty more to see in this backyard. There was about 3-4 different walls that were all leaning or cracking and they all needed to be replaced!

This was an attempted repair job on a cracked CMU wall. They installed angled steel strap brackets to try keeping one side from collapsing. It’s sort of working... for now. Here’s what the top end looks like. At least it was filled with concrete. No rebar, though!

You have to love the creativity an Jengs skills of whoever did these shim posts! Check out the baby shim above the brick! Amazing!

You want to know what water intrusion looks like on a concrete masonry wall? This is it!

This is one of those houses you don't want to be under for a very long time... all of the cripple walls and post and piers were tilting and the house was a solid wind gust away from collapsing.

This is truly a roller coaster ride looking at this joist support

This is a home we inspected that toppled over a few days after being hit by a car. The home wasn't really retrofitted and had nothing keeping it from toppling over. The home itself is about 3 feet back. There were no signs of bolting into the foundation.

This is a large landslide that happened in the back of a home in the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles County. Earlier this year, there was tons of heavy rainstorms in LA. As the rain saturates the soil more and more, it seeps down to what is called the slip or shear plane. The slip or shear plane is the point at which the soil becomes too heavy and slips away from the rest of the hill. Landslides are so unpredictable and can cause millions in damage and put people in harm's way. Luckily nobody was injured and there wasn't much damage other than some broken windows in the house below.

Ah yes, structural dust

This is an internal stem wall and sill plate which has a large crack running right down the center. There's no steel inside and it was likely caused by seismic activity or expansive soil.

At the corner of this home, a peculiar line of stucco seemed to be cracking and separating on both sides of the wall. It just seemed odd as to why, given that the rest of the house didn't seem to have anything like this. It turned out that an independent masonry column was built right at the corner and was pulling away from the rest of the wooden framing of the home. Very interesting.

I'm telling my kids these were the great pyramids of Pasadena

A leaning cripple wall above a very damaged concrete foundation! Check out that crack... yikes! This is part of the same foundation. This area is very undermined and broken to bits!

You can clearly see what's going on with this foundation by just a quick look at the cripple walls and posts. This is the same property. The whole foundation was shifted and settled down to one side. This caused the framing and floors to slope down toward the same way. Scary stuff!

A very professional retrofit done by somebody who really knows what they’re doing!

This was a gnarly hillside foundation we inspected where the cripple walls were falling off of the concrete foundation. This was a gnarly hillside foundation we inspected where the cripple walls were falling off of the concrete foundation. They attempted a repair with these massive support piers which don't appear to go down very far. The concrete foundation wall is in very bad shape with multiple big cracks in the concrete. They tried to install a plate and epoxy but it obviously didn't work too well. In addition to that, there were a couple floating post supports which swung back and forth from the connection straps at the top. Here's the exterior of the property where you can clearly see some rotation and movement with the foundation. This was likely caused by both seismic activity and hillside movement.

Here's a foundation wall that doesn't need much of an inspection. You can actually see this from the street. In need of a good replacement. At least in that section. This is another massive crack in the foundation of the home above. Sorry for the blurriness in this photo!

Expansive soil causing some damage to a post and pier system. This is very common in LA and it seems to be the main source of cracking in homes. This home has an interesting foundation made of part river rock and part concrete. It was almost as if the river rock was meant to be the aggregate for the concrete. Some people would say this is okay to retrofit. They also used some river rocks as the pier for the subfloor post supports. This foundation will likely need a full replacement.

Load bearing air is the best!

A wall made of hollow clay tile blocks was used to help reinforce this foundation wall. The actual concrete wall had tons of surcharge pressure from the soil behind it, thus the reason they built the tile wall. They tried using expansion/insulation foam to fill the voids in the tile blocks, but it wasn't enough to keep the wall holding strong. The wall was clearly being pushed out from the concrete foundation and the hydrostatic pressure from the soil below. Here's the entrance where you can see that both sides of the wall are leaning!

I love burnt ends, but not in this scenario.

Here we have a crumbling concrete pad supporting a subfloor with many layers of wooden 6x6s and other wooden panels. Sufficient? Sure. Done right? No

This is a gnarly retaining wall failure we inspected.
It has a great view of the valley but definitely needs some work and probably needs to be replaced.

Another section of a foundation which has been completely undermined, with most of the dirt coming out from underneath the concrete!

Just one more pipe...

Relatively new foundation with a large vertical crack! They also cut the girder into the concrete stem wall. Impressive.

This is your average masonry wall built on a steep hillside with no reinforcement. It's not rare to see this in LA.

We often get called by homeowners concerned about cracking in their home. Now, SoCal in particular has many areas riddled with clay soil, which expands and contracts with moisture or lack of. THIS is the type of cracking you should really be concerned about as a homeowner. In this particular instance, the home is quite literally pulling apart and splitting down the middle due to settlement and bad soils conditions.

This is a wall of an apartment building where the first floor is seen to be buckling severely! Here's a shot from the other side. Scary stuff!

The entire outside perimeter hardscape of this home was sinking almost a foot and was pulling away from the rest of the structure. Pretty gnarly!

Why make a solid pier, installed at the proper depth, with correct size, spacing and bracing, when you just don't have to? Why not just find a random piece of broken slab, shove it under there and call it a day?

This is an actual log cabin that was moved from another location into a lot in Santa Monica. One corner of the cabin was sinking and had some bad rot damage. The bottom log had rotted so bad that they had to replace it with a new, more "modern" log made of concrete. This didn't really help the situation and actually may have made it worse

This is the corner where the wood is compressing and rotting out. The slope toward this corner is no less than 3 inches lower than other areas of the floor.

The short studs you see here are part of a system called a cripple wall. It's a short wall, composed of studs and sheer paneling that is bolted into the concrete foundation and runs up to the framing of the home. As you can see, the top of the cripple wall isn't connected to anything and they even went as far as installing a hold-down (threaded metal anchor to the left) to the foundation but nothing at the top. Not sure if this ever went through an inspection, but I'm assuming it didn't.

Watch your step here too. This was a fairly new set of concrete stairs that had very shallow footings. The hillside also eroded away and the stairs came with it.

Rock solid post!

Here we have an unreinforced masonry foundation that's in need of a good replacement or sister foundation. Much of the brick foundations in LA County are around USC, Pomona, Pasadena and Long Beach. Many of them are considered historic properties, so limited work can be done. Those usually have to be sistered instead of replaced.

Who needs the post to be centered anyway?

This large reinforced concrete column has some obvious spall damage caused by water penetration from above.

Me: Can we get a new post & pier
Mom: We have a post and pier at home!
The post & pier at home:

This was a weird foundation with steel cables as reinforcement and a massive crack going through the entire wall. It's not alright if you can see the light...

There was rotted wood everywhere under this home and almost no framing connection to the foundation.

Bricks stacked on top of a severely damaged concrete foundation with large cracks and old seismic plates. Here's another section of the same foundation. The whole foundation rotated out on this side... check out the cuts on the studs to make up for the angle! One of the access points to this foundation was almost completely blocked off by makeshift foundation walls and dirt.

Upon inspection of this home's foundation, it was discovered that the rebar inside had rusted to a point where the expansion caused the entire foundation to split in half horizontally. Brad's hand for scale. Volume up because sound was muffled!

This is an undermined pier that is ready to fall over with one good shake!

You have to admire the creativity some people come up with!

Here's a next-level pier system in place under this home!

This is a telephone pole column encased in concrete. It has seen better days. Believe it or not, this was at one time a singular wooden post. Through many years of hightide, a channel was carved through the wood supports, making it seem like they are separate posts.

Here's a gnarly brick foundation which was turning to dust and falling apart. The mortar layers in between the bricks were literally just piles of dust and had no structural value to the foundation walls.

Oceanfront properties in Malibu are all prone to marine weathering of their concrete foundation systems. Many of them look like this, with exposed steel and withered concrete piles that support the home. The saltwater erodes away layers of concrete and steel over time and causes the supporting concrete, steel, and wood members to slowly be whittled down.