Who could've thought that photos from structural inspections can be as intense as a Hitchcock movie? Well, Alpha Structural, Inc., that's who.
The company specializes in advanced hillside foundation repair and are mainly called to inspect when buildings are facing issues such as sloping floors, failed retaining walls, etc. And the photos they come back with from these sites are absolute nail-biters.
Rotting decks. Crumbling foundations supported by screw jacks. These experts constantly run into disasters in the making and watching their pictures, you can't help but ask yourself, "How long will it hold?"
After you're done scrolling, check out Bored Panda's earlier articles about Alpha Structural, Inc. here, here, here, and here.
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This was a property built in the late 1940s by a guy who used to build barracks for the US Army. The home was sitting on metal I-beams and they were supported by large concrete piles. The home hasn't moved an inch since being built. Very interesting and impressive!
Usually, homeowners have a feeling when there's something wrong with their building but aren't really aware of the scope of the problem. "A majority of people know something is wrong but they are often oblivious to the reason behind the issues or the severity of the situation," an Alpha Structural, Inc. spokesperson told Bored Panda.
The representative for the LA-based company said they advise roughly 10-15% of the property owners that hire them to provide their buildings immediate attention. Although, they inspect over 100 properties a week so that number can vary week to week.
However, not everyone listens. "We've definitely inspected properties that should have been demolished too, though they never take our advice on that particular issue."
Alpha Structural, Inc. also shared exciting news: they're expanding to Orange County this November! So follow them on Instagram and Facebook for their cool content which we should be seeing more of soon.
A car jack used as a subfloor support underneath a home. Classic!
You know your hillside has significantly eroded when the concrete pad which was once embedded into the ground is now dangling a foot in the air.
We always seem to find very old but interesting items when working under homes in LA. Some stuff here dates back to the very early 1900s!
When my husband was redoing the basement he found so many empty liquor bottles. The first one hit him in the face because he wasn't expecting a glass bottle sliding down the ceiling panel when he took it down. Honestly alcoholism explained a lot of the weird things that they had done to our house renovation wise.
It was legal then and so were laudanum drops, which werebasically morphine (heroin). Ahh, the good old days!
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This is the result of a creeping hillside and shallow pile placement.
As the hillside slowly moves down or "creeps", the concrete piles, retaining walls and their footings begin to go down with it. This is why proper bearing material should be reached for all supporting systems on a hillside. Some places only require 5 feet down, others require 45+ feet down. It is imperative to get the proper depth!
In the UK houses have been built by the coastline that is chalk; mainly the calcium deposits of dead fish (I apologise if this is not 100% correct, but I think it is) What holds some of it together is where trees have been planted, therefore the roots will, even temporally, keep the soil from disintegrating. Do not buy a property next to a cliff, unless the cliff is made from rock (Disclaimer. I'm not a geologist and seek professional advice first).
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. We really don't know how it didn't collapse in the last earthquake here in LA. There's one thing for sure, it probably will in the next one.
Here's one of the corners of the home. This place is a ticking time bomb.
Sliiide to the left. Sliiiide to the right. Cha cha one time. Everybody clap your hands!
Almost all of the concrete piers under this home were in this condition. One solid kick and they would all be toast! They need a good replacement.
Jenga: House Edition.
This may look odd, but doesn't seem structurally questionable. One end of the girder is supported by masonry, the other by a post which is supported by the foundation. Blocking accepts the load from the beam above. I'd prefer to see some disaster clips, but this is fine. EDIT: Disaster clips AKA hurricane ties.
We have inspected this home a few times. It's a vacant lot, currently up for sale.
It has been like this for quite some time and should somebody buy the property, they would be in for a nice replacement project.
Here's the side of the home where you can see a decently sized crack separating the failed and stable areas.
Nature is taking over where this retaining wall has cracked and displaced.
A post barely hanging on and probably not doing a very good job at supporting the subfloor. The soil in the back can be seen to be very high in clay content. This is also called expansive soil and is riddled across LA County.
"How do you know it's rotted?" This is how.
I can't even imagine being in a crawlspace on my back and sticking a knife into the supporting beam above to find that it's no longer supporting and barely even a beam.
That old tree trunk seems to be the main support at this point.
This is a hillside deck supported by a few concrete piles with spall damage. It also appears that there were hollow spots after the poor and it was never repaired.
No marble test needed on this one. Now that's some sloping floors.
It all looks like new flooring and cabinets. Who the heck installs a new kitchen and doesn't realize that having to create a triangular-shaped toe kick isn't normal?
The heart of a termite den, once occupied by a colony of the little home destroyers.
When we do soft-story retrofitting, we often add exploratory demo to our engineering phase. This ensures that we know exactly what needs to be done and how to engineer it. This is the reason why!
Finally I have a term for my approach to problems, "exploratory demolition".
The stucco guy on this retrofit project called this "a done". I don't know about you, but that doesn't look like "a done" to me.
This was an area of a hillside home that was not being retained by an actual retaining wall. There was a wooden fence holding back the stone and dirt and it eventually gave way when too much pressure built up. Neighbors said it sounded like gunshots when the nails started popping out of the fence as it fell.
Mother Nature will always win eventually. I'm no tree or electrical expert, but I assume this is a fire hazard.
Those are all communication lines. Usually line-clearance is the responsibility of the relevant utility. The power company will clear anything interfering with their lines, but leave the lower stuff to the telephone/cable television utility. They usually don't care too much about it.
This is a massive crack in the middle of Route 95 in Nevada after the recent 6.5 magnitude earthquake.
Classic LA post and pier.
It's gotten so bad that even the brick and cement patio is caving in where the once sturdy deck supports were.
Luckily, all of these posts are treated but they all touch dirt!
In case anyone is wondering, the posts need to be in cement, not just in dirt...
This is truly a roller coaster ride looking at this joist support. Who wants to take a guess at the cause?
Definitely inadequate load-bearing capacity due to exceptionally poor placement of the posts. If they were placed directly beneath the joists and the horizontal member used for stability only, this might have been fine.
The concept of cripple walls doesn't seem to penetrate some people's minds. If a decently size earthquake struck near here, the house would likely fall off the foundation.
A few of the piles supporting this hillside deck are beginning to lean over, which will eventually cause some serious structural issues!
Note: this post originally had 179 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
These are some of my favorite posts on BP, equal parts educational and terrifying. I would love to see other structural inspection teams post pics from different parts of the country. It would be interesting to see how problems differ through various climates and soil conditions.
I agree that these are bad. Unfortunately the repair costs would be more than a lot of people can afford. In some cases probably more than the property is worth. What do you do then?
In this part of California, the property is most likely worth the cost of a complete rebuild. Prices there are crazy.
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I don't understand the building regulations in the US. Here in South Africa a house must be built on a solid foundation, sunk into the ground. This is inspected by the Council building inspector. Only then may the brickwork proceed. I watched my house being built, taking photos as it grew, for my album. I'm not sure how it is done on a slope, but one thing is for certain, you can't crawl under a South African house!
The saddest part is that earthquake insurance is no longer mandatory! Plus, you can only buy it from the state in CA and WA. But if more people buy it, it would be so inexpensive! Mine is twice as much as my homeowner policy, which is for a miliion $ altogether.
One of our favorite shows, out of three, is any Mike Holmes. I learned a lot watching his early shows, not how to "fix" anything, but what to look for when we remodeled. And the contractor we hired did everything correctly and I knew he had because he did it to specs and beyond. My Uncle Rusty, who was a builder, the one you called when yo wanted it done right, said that the absolute WORST thing you can build on is "dirt." He said you might as well go out to the beach and build your house on the sand right where the waves come in, because dirt gets wet, expands, contracts and will, eventually, destroy the foundation. In Texas we do not have basements unless they dig a huge hole and then build the basement in the hole after surrounding the walls with stabilizers. Any holes dug are, basically, away from the house and used for tornado "shelters." Most foundations here are pier and beam and slab.
I started making comments on individual posts, but to be honest I'd be here all day. One comment: Do you want your house to collapse around you, with the possibilty of not just killing yourself but your loved ones and or/your neighbours?
These sorts of failures don't typically result in complete collapse... As expensive as they are to fix, they're not life safety issues.
Load More Replies... I am always impressed by the tiny concrete pillars Americans call foundation....
They are horrifying. I have never really understood why American homes are built so lightly. My house is solid stone, the roof is held up by solid oak beams, and the floors are elm. It's been standing there for approximately 350 years or so. This isn't really that uncommon where I live.
I mean, you do understand that our country is not even 350 years old, correct...? The reason your house is made of stone is that you all clear-cut your forests generations ago. Our houses are built lightly because we can build inexpensive houses here, owing to our forestry resources. Stone, on the other hand, is hard to come by here, and is prohibitively expensive since we don't have nearly the masonry workforce that you all do, and since stone really isn't harvested as readily as wood is.
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These are some of my favorite posts on BP, equal parts educational and terrifying. I would love to see other structural inspection teams post pics from different parts of the country. It would be interesting to see how problems differ through various climates and soil conditions.
I agree that these are bad. Unfortunately the repair costs would be more than a lot of people can afford. In some cases probably more than the property is worth. What do you do then?
In this part of California, the property is most likely worth the cost of a complete rebuild. Prices there are crazy.
Load More Replies... I don't understand the building regulations in the US. Here in South Africa a house must be built on a solid foundation, sunk into the ground. This is inspected by the Council building inspector. Only then may the brickwork proceed. I watched my house being built, taking photos as it grew, for my album. I'm not sure how it is done on a slope, but one thing is for certain, you can't crawl under a South African house!
The saddest part is that earthquake insurance is no longer mandatory! Plus, you can only buy it from the state in CA and WA. But if more people buy it, it would be so inexpensive! Mine is twice as much as my homeowner policy, which is for a miliion $ altogether.
One of our favorite shows, out of three, is any Mike Holmes. I learned a lot watching his early shows, not how to "fix" anything, but what to look for when we remodeled. And the contractor we hired did everything correctly and I knew he had because he did it to specs and beyond. My Uncle Rusty, who was a builder, the one you called when yo wanted it done right, said that the absolute WORST thing you can build on is "dirt." He said you might as well go out to the beach and build your house on the sand right where the waves come in, because dirt gets wet, expands, contracts and will, eventually, destroy the foundation. In Texas we do not have basements unless they dig a huge hole and then build the basement in the hole after surrounding the walls with stabilizers. Any holes dug are, basically, away from the house and used for tornado "shelters." Most foundations here are pier and beam and slab.
I started making comments on individual posts, but to be honest I'd be here all day. One comment: Do you want your house to collapse around you, with the possibilty of not just killing yourself but your loved ones and or/your neighbours?
These sorts of failures don't typically result in complete collapse... As expensive as they are to fix, they're not life safety issues.
Load More Replies... I am always impressed by the tiny concrete pillars Americans call foundation....
They are horrifying. I have never really understood why American homes are built so lightly. My house is solid stone, the roof is held up by solid oak beams, and the floors are elm. It's been standing there for approximately 350 years or so. This isn't really that uncommon where I live.
I mean, you do understand that our country is not even 350 years old, correct...? The reason your house is made of stone is that you all clear-cut your forests generations ago. Our houses are built lightly because we can build inexpensive houses here, owing to our forestry resources. Stone, on the other hand, is hard to come by here, and is prohibitively expensive since we don't have nearly the masonry workforce that you all do, and since stone really isn't harvested as readily as wood is.
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