This was a property near Santa Monica that had no soil underneath, just sand. The entirety of the central foundation was sinking and had minimal support. The fact that this home was still standing is astonishing.

Here we have an old retaining wall being bullied and tossed around by a bunch of invasive plant roots. The wall is going to be replaced and hopefully so will the garage.

Who wants to take a dip in this amazing underground swimming pool? Don't mind the undermined posts and piers!

Sometimes the access points to get under a home can be very... disheartening.

This is what is known as "spall damage." It occurs when moisture gets into concrete and begins to rust away the steel inside. This can cause major structural issues over time and should always be addressed ASAP!

Just another average Los Angeles post and pier.

This is what it looks like when your pool has been leaking for many years and nothing has been done about it.

A nice puddle of possible sewage right at the bottom of the only crawlspace access. Fun!

I'll put sarcasm aside on this one to explain how ridiculous it is. What we have here is an internal wall that has been filled with old concrete chunks and rocks (probably from the construction). There's so much wrong with this I almost don't want to explain further. Actually, I won't. I'll let you guys guess.

Here we have a collapsed rock retaining wall that we're about to replace. Not only did the retaining wall collapse and give way, but the garage's concrete wall was also bowing inward about 6 inches caused by the collapse. We will be replacing the whole thing with concrete. It's not even a large hillside or anything but with the condition the wall was in, it could no longer stand by itself and caved inward towards the property. This also had a lot to do with the backside pressure of the slope/hill.

This was a garage that was both heaving and sinking in multiple places. Some portions were sinking, such as the spot in this photo, and others were rising up a few inches. Clay soil and bad drainage will do this to an unreinforced slab. Earth to wood contact. This is all too common in LA and the main cause of rot and termite damage.

Yet another fantastic game of Jenga! Why they chose to play it under the home, I don't know.

We were inspecting this home in Los Angeles when we discovered something odd in the back of the property. An old seepage pit/well that was uncovered and had an old city sewer line running through the bottom. This guy dug down into the ground, uncovered the city sewer line and just built the seepage pit around it. Mad lad.

Earth-to-wood contact will always end up with moldy, decayed and rotted wood members. Moisture has and will continue to get into the above cripple walls and will cause sagging and serious house settlement in some cases.

This one is cool. We inspected this old hotel for being a potential non-ductile concrete building (ductile refers to the structure's ability to be flexible during seismic movement). These buildings are under a mandatory retrofit ordinance for many cities in LA County. Anyways, what you're seeing is actually an old pool, a famous one at that. Marilyn Monroe swam in this pool back in the day. They ended up doing a ton of renovations and covered up the pool with concrete to create more space above.

This is brick foundation/basement retaining wall from the early 1900s that has completely imploded.
The exterior pressure was too much for the brittle wall to take and eventually gave way.
Not only that, but there's random 2x6s holding up the subfloor of the first level. A very dangerous situation.

Just a little bit of settlement, right?

This was a property with horrible termite damage all over the place. Multiple joists, girders and studs were eaten away, almost entirely by termites.
Termites, if not dealt with, will cause extreme damage to framing and structural members. These studs were eaten to bits.

This property had some really bad sewage leaking, unbraced sub floor framing and crumbling concrete. You see all that chalky white powder? That's a massive pile of efflorescence from an ongoing leak. Nasty stuff.

This is the same property with one wall completely leaning a good 5-6 inches. Yikes...

Here's a concrete tilt-up building we inspected that had some bad spall damage and cracking on a few concrete columns. No bueno.

It's never a good thing when you can see sunlight from underneath the crawlspace that comes from anywhere but the entry.
This foundation was basically turning to dust and had some pretty bad cracking as well. Most of it needs to be completely replaced or sistered.

One more heavy rain and this bad boy just might give way.

Ficus trees will destroy anything man creates, including retaining walls, homes and any other structure that gets in its way. Crazy nature.

Here we have some very bad spalling concrete. I've showed many examples of spall damage but this one is probably the best. Lots of water intrusion over a short period can cause this issue. Improper water proofing and lack of adequate drainage can play a big role in this occurring with your home. It doesn't matter if you have a new foundation or one that's been there for a century -- if water is present and there isn't anything to stop it or reroute it, the concrete with soak it right up and cause this problem.

This was an early 1900’s home with the original brick chimney and river rock foundation. The foundation itself was obviously in rough shape and required a sister foundation. Under HPOZ (Historical Preservation Overlay Zone), it is required that instead of replacing this foundation, the owner must do a “sister foundation” next to it. The mortar, for the most part, has turned into dust! Retrofitting this would be impossible and without a concrete sister foundation, it would crumble in a decent quake. There was so much excess dirt in this crawlspace that the concrete foundation was buried and not even accessible or viewable!

A CMU retaining wall that is in desperate need of a replacement.

Here is another one, but this one is a bit more "jenga-ish."

We inspected this old, historic theater in Los Angeles in need of seismic upgrades. I can't say which one but it's pretty well known. The structure is referred to as a "non-ductile" building made with un-reinforced concrete. These are huge projects that take a ton of engineering and construction. The catwalk above that shows a lot of steel supporting a concrete roof and concrete walls.

These wood sheathing boards were put in place to act as a sort of shear wall. They don't actually attach to a girder and they go straight into the fiberglass insulation. Not sure what goofball did this but they need to retake a few classes!

Here we have a severely damaged retaining wall that's connected to a garage. The wall is jutting out over 16 inches and ready to collapse.

We inspected this property a while back but were called back out for more scopes of work. It's usually normal to have 2 top plates. Top plates refer to what is usually a 2x4 piece of lumber on top of studded walls or framing and doorways/windows. This property has, above its cripple wall, EIGHT top plates.

Torque check on foundation bolts.

This is an oceanfront home we inspected in Malibu that has some serious structural framing damage. Tons of wooden beams and columns need to be replaced. Almost all of the existing wooden members were rotting.

There's some severe settlement and heaving in this slab foundation. It's quite obvious, even in the photos, that the slab and exterior walls are settling quite a bit.

This is an old UFP (Universal Foundation Plate) from the 80s. These are used for seismic retrofitting/bolting of the foundation. The ones we discovered under this home were all rusting and breaking apart. They probably wouldn't do much to protect the home in the next major earthquake.

Never have I seen something as ridiculous as somebody screwing actual doors to the framing of a home, probably for structural reinforcement. Just comical.

This pier is rock solid.

Check out this gnarly retaining wall that was leaning a good 11 inches! Something that is this old and leaning this much would undoubtedly have to be replaced.

There were two sources of water coming into this foundation; one being a leaking sewer pipe and the other was tons of water seeping in through the concrete foundation. Whoever did the waterproofing didn’t do a very good job.

This is a massive crack we discovered while doing a foundation inspection on a property up for sale. From the exterior you can see that it had been stucco'd over and hidden from plain site. A quick inspection from underneath proved that the suspicion of damage was true. This whole foundation stem wall was rotating outward and in need of some extensive repairs.

This home was leaning/sinking about 5 inches to one side. You can see how the cripple walls above the concrete foundation are quite obviously leaning to the left.

The following few photos are from a single inspection and once again show the laziness of some contractors. I say "some" because there are actually good contractors out there who provide a good service, but that is rare. I will break this down simply so people understand what is going on. This is a concrete foundation that had been retrofitted into old, brittle concrete. The aggregate (rock and sand used in concrete mixtures) is clearly exposed, showing the foundation is old and has been weathered over time. When a foundation is in this condition, retrofitting should definitely be postponed for after the replacement. So, instead of replacing the foundation, it was retrofitted and then a excessive amount of epoxy was injected into the holes and surrounding areas. They did this because they new the bolts themselves wouldn't be enough to hold the concrete together. The epoxy hardened and slightly expanded, pushing out a portion of the already brittle concrete. Now the bolt is exposed and is barely embedded into the "concrete." This whole foundation needs to be sistered or replaced, THEN have retrofitting done.