SVreX
MegaDork
9/11/15 6:34 a.m.
In reply to OHSCrifle:
If I were in your position, I would revisit your original post.
You may not be able to sue the inspector for not getting out of the truck, but you may be able to sue the City for gross negligence, or the incompetence of their staff.
6' thick of debris in the footprint is enormous, and completely unacceptable. It's hard to imagine how they could have missed this.
Threat of a class action lawsuit from all of the homeowners affected by this builder (and the Citiy's failure to properly oversee the project and enforce the laws) might get their attention.
I'm sorry you are dealing with this.
SVreX wrote:
The best insurance policy on a new house would not be relying on a General Contractor, but hiring an independent soils engineer and testing company to monitor the fill and compaction. They inspect the soils type, probe with a probe rod, complete proof rolls, and bore when necessary. They actually watch the work being done, and write an in-depth report. It would add a few thousand dollars to the average job (assuming the sub-base was suitable- if not it will add tens of thousands to undercut the bad soil).
Commercial sites use soils engineers on every job. Residential sites literally never see them.
This is what our company does, only we don't do residential work. Even commercial jobs will try to pinch that penny.
Enyar
Dork
9/11/15 8:10 a.m.
Where in FL? As recent home shopper, I've seen PLENTY of similar situations.
In reply to SVreX:
It's my wife's parents. What compounds the suck.. they have a reverse mortgage on the place. Unloading it is complicated.
For clarification, one boring showed a two foot thick layer and another shows a six inch thick layer with tree debris.
The fact that some of this ztuff is six feet deep is troubling..
Seems like a sign of intent to hide the stuff (or maybe they just bored through a deep root that grew there - hard to tell when developers "clear cut" a hundred acres).
Thanks for the ideas. The point about mud jacking potentially compressing or encapsulating the decaying wood is a good one.
In reply to Enyar:
Yeah. I've been reading your stories with interest. Did you ever buy something?
Enyar
Dork
9/11/15 7:44 p.m.
In reply to OHSCrifle:
We're currently under contract. It seems like skipping out on the few homes I posted about are going to work out for the better. The area I was looking in is known for settling issues. The problem is back in the day companies would basically go door to door offering $40k from the insurance company if you file a sinkhole claim. These claims were basically pure fraud (most of the time) and homeowners didn't realize the damage they were doing to future home values.
In this area the damage is due to clay in the soil. Sinkholes do occur as well. I've read a bunch of engineering reports from the houses we looked at it's actually pretty fascinating. One was due to organic matter decomposition similar to what you mentioned. I can send you the engineering reports if youre interested.
In reply to Enyar:
Thanks for the offer. But not now. I'm gonna let my pop-in-law talk to some contractors and see if any have good suggestions.
[I'm an architect and my dad is a retired structual engineer. Wife's dad (homeowner) and bro, and bro in law.. are all various engineer and construction mgt types. We're all doing research right now].
So the First contractor my father in law contacted suggested helical piles 6' o.c. to support the slab on grade. Drive pile to refusal and then insert some kind of shoe with a threaded rod to do the lifting. Then grout solid.
Pay by the foot.
At 6' o.c. this seems like it would induce bending and over stress a 4" slab, which likely has only reinforcing mesh. A slab on grade is happy when fully, uniformly supported. Picking it up on points seems like a bad idea to me.
I would be reluctant to do this alone, but after pumping some grout or urethane underneath, it might be ok.
Thoughts welcome. Thanks for continued brainstorming.
In reply to slefain:
I too worked as a "clean-up" kid. I saw a lot of crazy stuff. My favorite was the builder was cheap and it wasn't code to have porta potties so once in a while I would find a 25# nail box in the crawl space I would have to remove. Mystery boxes - disgusting.
Talk about leaving a trench open for a week is nothing. I'm a driver for a lumber yard, and one of the contractors we work with has had a basement dug for over a year now. Just one nice big hole in the ground. Exterior doors for that house have been taking up room in our back warehouse the whole time. Well maybe they finally decided it was a dead order and they finally got dumped into our contractors corner.
whenry
Reader
9/12/15 12:49 p.m.
As attorney one of my areas of concentration is residential construction litigation. I have seen several houses built in areas without adequate support or compaction. Fill by contractor of construction debris or organic material is quite common. I had a case where one house(a typical McMansion) was built over a natural drainage trench which based upon the Geologist was over 60' deep and filled with at least 43' of organic fill. No one ever came up with a solution so the various insurance carriers for contractor, excavator, developer and architect paid an additional 80k over the purchase price to settle the lawsuit. The really funny thing is that no one wanted title to the house so the homeowner got $$$ and to keep the house. When his new house is completed, we intend to auction off the house. It will be interesting to see how many Bubba's try to buy the house and cure it with the simple mud jacking.
In my experience, while a sinkhole can be filled by a competent and committed builder, most builders are not willing to take the effort and create most of the problems. I also have a current case where the builder used a "pourable fill" to firm up a corner of the foundation and created a dam under the house for underground water.
So I'm visiting at the in-laws place for Christmas.
UPDATES: House has a 10 year "2/10 structural home warranty" - the kind very common to new residential construction in FL during the boom before the bust. House is about 9.5 yrs old. FIL investigated the "warranty". PAID $250 to submit a claim. Engineer visited on behalf of warranty and acknowledged the info collected, that it is legitimately something bad (since the interior slab and walls are all pulling downward and separated from the bottom of the truss/ceiling).
Then company denied the claim. FIL concludes that basically it's a scam of a policy. Rather than spend more lawyers, he is quite likely to proceed with nine interior pilings as described above, and mudjack or urethane injection to fill the resulting void space. $$$$ Merry Christmas!
And there are new cracks in an exterior wall.
Gonna brainstorm some more with the various family members after dinner today.
In reply to whenry:
How do you go about tracking down "various insurance carriers for contractor, excavator, developer and architect "?
This is a large residential development (not Sun City or The Villages.. but not also not small)
Thx
