Everything is code when there is no code. (Not in LA)

They missed...

YES, this is a real skull & YES it was called in to the police and YES it was confirmed by a detective coroner.

While doing a real estate inspection in the valley, one of our assessors came across the above skull. It was said to be found in Peru by the previous owners. Apparently, they brought it back in their luggage when returning from their vacation in Peru. Why they would do this is beyond me.

This was later confirmed by the sellers of the property that it was in fact brought back over to the states from Peru. The skull, which was studied by the coroner, was roughly 1,000 years old. This is by far one of the craziest things we've seen doing foundation inspections in Los Angeles.

This was taken during one of our structural inspections in North Hollywood. It's gonna take a little more than duct tape to fix this one.

Now, I forgot the term for these, but basically it's a massive hole/well that was about a meter under the concrete footing. The owner had no idea this was here. Must have been there for decades.

And they were wondering why their floors were sagging.

During an inspection, one of our assessors found this beauty. A wall created entirely out of concrete filled washing machines.

And there goes the other half of your house

A car jack perhaps?

"I have sagging floors" And this is why.

This is something you don't see every day: A colony of bees/hornets/wasps, have created a honeycombed nest on the carcass of a dead animal and it became the perfect online content. Nasty.

This is a foundation made up of river rock, some sort of hardened mortar and the tears of the contractors who did it. Also, I see a rhino!

This is a very interesting view from a basement window. It's actually located in a shower and you can see the critters moving around in the dirt. Hope you like bugs!

It may seem as if this is a photo was taken at an angle, but I assure you, it was perfectly straight. The floors are just sloping down a good 6 inches from the middle of the home.

Nothing is worse than coming across a massive gas pipe while excavation. It wasn't on the initial plans.

Though these jacks are pretty common...they should never be used as a permanent pier. Unless secured with duct tape of course.

This is an abandoned home in East Los Angeles. I don't want to get too technical on this, but not even the homeless would want to set up shop in there.

This is one of the craziest structural fails I've ever seen. No re-bar, not bolted, settling 2 ft and it's on sand...Just wow!

Yeah...that's not legal.

A soft-story can be described as multi-level structure built with a first floor that is much less rigid (soft) than the floors above, such as in an apartment with tuck under parking. This is a cause for concern, for when an earthquake hits, the existing columns do not have the strength to protect against the sideways movement that can occur.

This is actually the door leading to Narnia. It just so happens that it's under a house in Pasadena, CA.

Seriously though, they used this as a sort of "shear wall" for additional strength. Again, an obvious DIY job.

May not look like much, but a single toddler jumps and that set of stairs and deck come down.

This is a first

Not in terrible condition but I really want to kick it in.

It's simple, the floor is actually a balloon. Prepare to fly.

The fact that almost all of the post & piers were like this is concerning!

This is what happens when wood touches dirt over a long period of time. It soaks up water and rots.

So from here we see there is a slope starting from the right and going 15 feet to left.
After peeling back the carpet, we discovered a massive slab crack. To the right of the crack we see another crack that's been patched. The left side of the house was completely sinking a total of 18 inches from the point of the crack. One of the worst slab conditions we've seen so far in LA.

Stay hydrated my friends...

Let's just say it's a little over-engineered.

This patio above the garage had a little water intrusion...

They might want to add a "Do not park next to this obviously failing retaining wall because it might fall on your car in the night and we're not paying for it" sign.

This is a disaster waiting to happen. A large area of the back patio is basically floating on this hillside. Also, you can clearly see my finger in the frame.

The issue is....all of it

The columns on the side are fine, but the middle one...it's game over

During an inspection in Los Angeles, we came across this brittle, failing foundation made of brick. The mortar simply fell right off of the brick in a dust waterfall. An earthquake would more than likely demolish this home.

Post that's barely resting upon a concrete pier. This one is undermined and probably one good shake away from collapsing.

It's a bucket filled with sand, not concrete, used as a concrete pier. Code? Nope. Aesthetic? Nope. Funny? Yep.

This speaks for itself. If you're wondering about the filter, I lost the original. All I have is our Instagram photo.

Nature will find it's way. (Ficus Tree Root)

Let's play a game of Jenga in the back yard.

A big concrete block, random wood members and plywood. That should do.

Did a structural assessment for this home and the lady was wondering why her home was sloping 7 inches. Some classic LA settlement.

The roots basically said F**K YOU and broke the wall with ease.

This was a very interesting hillside home that was sliding down the hill. They needed an engineered wall to keep the house from cracking down the slope.

This one is subtle but the property is shifting like crazy! The back wall is bowing quite a bit and in the top right, where the stilts connect to the overhang, you can see the waviness of the connections and how unstable it really is.

A few more inches down and that would have made a nice half-pipe for skateboarding. Image below shows the cause of this dip!

This was found under a house. Somebody undermined the entire footing then stopped the excavation and left.

This is a sump pump. It should be isolated in a plastic or concrete basin to collect water. This was installed into dirt. Fail.

Water was constantly getting into the wall. This is the ugly result!

They did it right in the 1920's.

Not.

"who goes under a house to steal a wooden block off a pier?"

Seems that they mixed every piece of rubble after a demolition and made a wall with it.

"I tried fixing it myself but I thought I'd give the experts a call"

A pier with the footing sinking 7 inches down on the right. There were 6 others just like it under this property.

Poor drainage, erosion and lack of care

Just don't stick your hand in there...the house could bite.

This may look like a cool, industrial ceiling pattern in a DTLA villa, but it's actually water intrusion coming through the cracks above.

This was a failed retaining wall that we're fixing up. It actually wraps around the front (which you'll see below) and the pressure underneath and farther up the hill caused it to fall over and collapse into the street and into the neighbors yard. What occurred was called a "surcharge" and it's when the pressure from the structure puts too much tension into the surrounding soil that it slowly gets pushed outwards.

This is a deck that extended past the garage doors below it. Needless to say, it had some insane wood-rot underneath! In the photo to the right, you can see the once sturdy deck was held together by a massive framing bolt. Now it's free floating.

This is the side of a home that had awful water damage and wood-rot. The walls were so badly damaged and damp, they began to buckle and burst open, exposing the interior framing and causing the house to sink on one end.

This is a pretty severe crack in the concrete foundation of a hillside home. Metal strapping is one solution to this, though it's never recommended because the problems will persist and show up again in a few years. Replacing this section would be the correct action.

You don't have to be an expert to see there's an issue here. The foundation and framing connection (cripple wall) is buckling out toward the driveway. This is causing sloping floors, interior and exterior cracking and sticking doors.

It's like crawling through broken glass

Look at that bend!

A pier made with brick & mortar...No Bueno!

A spider made this crack it's home and now we can't do the work. We don't want to tear a spider family apart like that.

I mean, if it works...

A missing pier will inevitably cause sagging of the sub-floor.

Well, it does the job but it's not strapped and it could cause future damage.

This is more of an art piece that was built into the foundation. There's rock, a cinder block, 2x4's and a metal plate, all tied into the foundation. Beautiful, elegant, illegal.

This is actually a project that we took on and it's almost done. This is a VERY steep hillside up in Hollywood that was collapsing and continuously falling and creating more damage to the hillside. We drilled piles down about 30 feet to bedrock for stabilization and added a new retaining wall system for the upper tier.

At this point it's not worth repairing. Just replace the foundation.

The result of bad water proofing: Spalling Concrete.

This was the "foundation" of an old school built in the early 1900's. Completely made up of rock and rubble, this would in no way survive an earthquake. We're redoing the entire foundation.

This was a massive 30' retaining wall in the back of a few properties. There's nothing really "wrong" with it, other than it's clearly uneven at most points and it seems to have been un-permitted. A pool at the bottom right clearly indicates the real reason the wall is there; cliff diving practice.

A post that's barely resting upon a concrete pier.

This one really makes me chuckle because it looks like the feds are using a spotlight to catch a felon (Dasani bottle) on the ledge of a skyscraper.

This pier has simply given up in life and is allowing the process of earth decomposition to take place.

Another large, vertical crack that is displaced. Though it is a newer looking foundation, there was no reinforcement bar and a small earthquake hit the area. Snap.

Termites and dry rot...unfortunate

Here's the real damage. A rotating concrete foundation with a complete absence of re-bar (reinforcement steel). Not only is the concrete rotating; it's sinking, cracked on both ends and could easily cause the house to fall at any time.

The previous contractor filled the whole thing up with rubble...

This is a ridiculous spalling issue. It's as if they threw in small pieces of re-bar while the concrete was hardening.

If you open up a wall and the concrete crumbles out like this...you might have some foundation issues.

An obvious issue. The foundation and existing wall failing and sliding down the hillside.

Here, you can see both sides of the property have collapsed and crushed the cars below.

This is a look at an 1885 home in Los Angeles. The "posts" are 2x8s with little to no concrete pier to rest on. The brick foundation is crumbling and falling apart more and more every year and needs to be entirely replaced. It's lasted this long, but it wont last for much longer.

Earth wins this battle

Seems as if it did more damage than not. Those walls are coming out for sure.

A wall that's trying to change zip codes

A deteriorating river rock foundation in Pasadena. There's a bunch of those out there and almost all of them need work!

Burn the house

What could possibly be wrong with...
oh..right

Concrete or dust?

Somebody is playing Jenga

Being serious, this is a bad slope issues, mainly due to poor drainage and downspouts pouring right out near the base of the foundation. Caused a lot of wood rot and joists to start bowing.

This is my favorite of today's post. This is a brick foundation that completely toppled over in the night. We were called out to do emergency shoring (Support lumber) to keep the house from collapsing down. We're adding brand new concrete foundations to both side's of the home. CLOSE CALL!

That bolt/screw you see is supposed to be holding down the framing into concrete. The concrete foundation has eroded almost completely.

There were about 7 of these DIY posts under the home. The owners were wondering why the property was sloping so much. This is why!

This was an inspection of a soft story building in Los Angeles. These buildings are under a mandatory ordinance for earthquake retrofitting. While on the "discovery period" for this project, it was discovered that there was awful wood-rot and rusting of the bolts and straps.

The crawl space access is all sorts of ****** up.

It's cracked on both ends. The mud sill was doubled as a part of a lifting process. It basically did nothing but cause more pressure down.

A full foundation replacement + Caissons is in order. (Caissons are just steel reinforced concrete shafts going deep into bearing soil)

Hmm..I wonder why this house was leaning 9"

It may look somewhat stable..but touching it with a hammer would turn it to dust. Also, the pipe on the ground broke in half when we moved it.

Wall.exe failed to exist

Water intrusion causing some spalling (when water seeps into concrete and oxidizes the re-bar and causes the concrete to break) *breath*

A poor excuse for a solid foundation. I think you should be concerned when you can fit your arm in the crack..... Don't make jokes, I'm serious.

Stones and dust holding up a post under a home.

This homeowner thought it was a good idea to undermine the foundation and put in a few masonry blocks underneath. This was discovered by the city somehow. Tisk tisk. We are doing an entire sister foundation (built-in foundation right next to the existing) and I will be sure to share when we are done.

Here's a better angle on the photos above. You can see how the mudsil (2x4 bolted to concrete foundation) is cracked in half and coming inward. No good.

A crack from hell. This is a displaced and sinking foundation. This crack was probably the result of years and years of seismic movement in the area. (1909 home)

Displacement in the basement

That crack in between the tiered stem wall is dropping about 2 inches.

Industrial concrete building with some bad water intrusion. Caused the steel inside the concrete to rust and break off.

Straight as a nail.

This is a beam. A DIY glulam beam. A glulam beam is laminated peace of wood made up of other layers that are glued together. There's 8 different pieces of lumber all glued together here. Not very stable and definitely not safe.

Gravity will take care of the rest.

This is a brick retaining wall that has been failing over the past 20 years. It leads right up to the house and would surely turn to dust in the case of an earthquake.

Same property except somehow it has gotten worse. It's quite obvious this is a non-permitted area will multiple issues. Brick garden wall is failing, brick and masonry wall is failing, material strewn around the yard, broken irrigation, and a sign that really helps people only in the back yard.

Sorry for the bad quality photo, but this is a one-story brick warehouse from 1947. The lower half of the brick wall is completely tilted and days away from falling apart.

This is the house equivalent of breaking your femur bone. This is a very large crack in the foundation that is causing some settling, displacement and bowing of the wall above.