30 Worst Things Seen During Structural Inspections (New Pics)
Interview With Expert
You’d think that the worst things that structural inspectors find would be faulty foundations, hideous holes in houses, as well as asbestos in the attic. However, some inspectors seem to have bad luck following them about because they stumble upon the weirdest, creepiest, and horrifying things during their examinations of buildings. Like skulls. Or occult altars. Or dolls that have a ghost living inside of them and whose eyes are totally following you when you look away.
Bored Panda interviewed Derek Marier from California-based Alpha Structural, Inc. about the strange things that he and his co-workers find during their inspections. In fact, there are so many peculiar finds that Marier makes a weekly thread on Imgur about them and always gets the internet’s attention. In fact, the company already has nearly 11,000 followers on Instagram because of the interesting things that its employees see while on the job. We’ve collected some of the best examples to help showcase that the supernatural might be among us.
According to Marier, he found a skull during one inspection and it turned out to be over 1,000 years old!
“Coming across things such as the dolls or a skull shake you up at first. You’re expecting to locate a structural defect but come end up finding something you can almost label as satanic or ancient. I would have to say the skull gave me the biggest chills by far. I assumed that it was fake right from the start, but I didn’t realize that I picked up an actual skull from Peru which was estimated at being 1,000+ years old,” Marier went into detail during an interview with Bored Panda.
Scroll down for Bored Panda’s full interview with him.
So scroll down, upvote your favorite freaky finds, and leave us a comment about which things you thought were the strangest and why. When you’re done with this list, be sure to check out Bored Panda’s previous posts about nightmares and miracles spotted during inspections, as well as the worst thing seen during inspections.
More info: AlphaStructural.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
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This subterranean basement had a window that opened up into an open area underground. Imagine opening the window in your basement and a group of bats fly in. That probably wouldn't happen here but it's possible! This is a great spot for putting your disobedient kids.
That is actually pretty cool, and also something looks like from The Sims
“I would say the tunnel somebody dug under the foundation put more fear into me than any of the creepy Items I have found. I’ve heard horror stories of people getting trapped under houses by attempting to squirm through those gaps. That’s a nightmare in itself. Thank the lord there was no scary doll or human skull staring me in the face while I was attempting to crawl through!”
During structural inspections, if Marier finds anything weird or creepy, he first takes photos of the items, then informs the homeowner about them, and then contacts the authorities. However, he contacts the police only if he finds things that are a bit ‘sketchy or require forensic investigation.’
We are doing a seismic retrofit on this apartment building and our crew took off the bottom portion of stucco on this column to expose the column connections. This is, quite literally, what we discovered. There was nothing supporting the unit above. No connections or even anything touching the ground besides the stucco facade. Thank goodness we had shoring put in place.
“The Nkondi [a type of mystical doll] was just hanging out in somebody’s garage, as if it were normal to just have a spiritual statue from a Congo Tribe. I don’t think it was fake at all either,” he said, also mentioning that he has no idea where the 1,000-year-old skull ended up. The authorities took the skull for further investigation. I didn’t really stay in touch with them so I’m not entirely sure where it ended up. I can only assume it’s in some holding facility for contraband or at a local Peruvian Museum.”
“The dolls stayed there because I know better than to touch those! Most of the structural issues you see in the gallery were completely handled by our company. It’s definitely scary for the homeowner at first, but we’ve been doing this for 25+ years and are very experienced in structural repair. Especially if they’re labeled as ‘scary.’”
According to Marier, not all owners are aware that they have scary things hidden in their homes. “In the case of the skull, the owners didn’t know it was there. The previous owners brought it back some time in the 70s or 80s and just threw it under the home. They were just as surprised to see it as I was! The dolls were also found under the home creepily enough. Whether the owners knew they were there or not is beyond me. But they had no reason being there and that made me think it was either a prank or that they’ve been sitting under the home for decades becoming more and more evil looking.”
We discovered this REAL skull while doing a foundation inspection on a property in LA. The authorities were called and it was discovered that the skull was in fact real and that the previous owners brought it back from Peru in the 70s or 80s. There wasn't any TSA agents to stop them from bringing it back, and when it came time to sell the property they threw it under the home.
In a previous interview, foundation repair contracting firm Alpha Structural, Inc. talked to Bored Panda about poor structural conditions in some buildings, as well as giving advice to help homeowners make their homes safer. Company representative Ben Reinhart had this to say: “I would say one of the worst homes we inspected was back in 1992. We went to a 3-story hillside home located in Playa del Rey.”
“The condition of the soil supporting the home was so bad that, during our assessment, we found that the home was cracking and actually moving. We are not alarmists in any sense but this was the first time we had to evacuate. Temporary shoring was put in the next morning to prevent the home from collapsing. The complexity of the repair required, getting a large rig on a steep hillside to excavate a 55’ deepened foundation, made this one of the worst most challenging in our long history. Let’s just say if we were on a reality TV show, this episode would’ve been a season finale.”
This was brand new, 2019 construction and this is what they do. How lazy can people get, you ask? This lazy.
One of the worst structural cracks we've ever seen. The entire back side of the home was sinking down and pulling away from the rest of the structure. A knock down if you ask me.
Found this Nkondi while doing an inspection. Nkondi are statues made by tribes of the Congo. They can mean many things but are often said to hold a spirit which hunts down bad people and wrong-doers.
I bet their TV has been flickering for years. Carry on Carol Anne. Now this house is clean.
Looks like they are. My guess would be monkey - but don't quote me on that
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According to Alpha Structural, Inc., there are lots of reasons why some homes aren’t repaired and have problems with their foundations, such as “budget constraints, timing, accessibility of workspace, etc.” However, the company believes that most of the responsibility falls on the shoulders of the contractors who are hired to repair their homes and don’t always do a good job.
The company also had some sound advice to help home-owners keep their homes safe: “Our advice would be to clean out gutters, ensure you have downspouts that direct water away from your foundation and see that the hardscape (walkways, patios, etc.) and landscape grade away from the home. Most foundation problems are caused by water and poor drainage.”
“If you look under your home, check to see that there is no earth to wood contact. Not only will moisture from the ground get to the wood and cause rot, it also allows for wood destroying organisms to get to the framing of your home. Additionally, earthquake retrofitting is a cost-effective upgrade encouraged by not only engineering communities, but also local and state officials.”
This is an old septic well covered up under a parking space of an apartment building. It's about a century old but was still in decent shape.
Whoever did this has quite the sense of humor, but lacks the proper funds.Mickey Mouse Job: A job done incorrectly in an extremely poor manner using the simplest, easiest, cheapest and fastest way possible.
This feels like a temp job that was left in place due to cost, "if it ain't broke don't fix it" attitude, or the owner just plain forgot about it.
Another extremely creepy doll which had no reason to be where it was.
If you wanted a visual representation of what evil looks like, this is it. And the brick foundation is in really bad shape...
Just burn the house down. That doll will do it sooner or later anyway.
At least they braced it, but still a total mickey mouse job.
Why are these houses built like this?? Why not put a slab of cement and build a brick house like here in SA?? Honestly
Almost stepped on this during an inspection but I decided not too. He looked like a fungi. Ha.
Here's a few post and piers under the same house that are also clearly leaning quite a bit.
This is a wooden column which is currently the main support for an apartment unit above. Moisture has basically eaten away the bottom of the column, rendering it pretty useless. We're currently doing an earthquake retrofit for this building and will soon be replacing this column with steel. Would you feel safe if your unit was being help up by this column? I wouldn't.
that's actually terrifying. i hope all apartment complexes regularly check for these things.
If you have foundation issues, your internal cracking should resemble this. Large, diagonal cracking. Though, this was a pretty severe case.
Apparently if a crack can fit a 50c piece sideways then that is when you know you NEED to get it seen to and fixed. Cracking in houses is quite common due to ground movement but they are usually hairline cracks.
Slab crack to the max... At times homeowners can be overly concerned about cracking in their homes. However, this type of cracking is definitely a cause for concern...
RIP.
Wonder what kind of animal that is, the teeth look too long to be a dogs but I could be wrong. It’s been preserved reasonably well.
Grab some 2x4s and a little DIY creativity and you have yourself a recipe for mickey mouse work.
Always remember, doing the cheapest repair is the best route to go no matter what!
(Please do not take that seriously!!)
This was a front porch that had been sinking a few inches over a short time. This created some separation from the columns that help support the roof above (as most porches in LA connect directly to a portion of the roof). You can see that they added a large post to the right of the column so it would help with supporting the weight-load from above. Scary stuff!
There's 11 different pieces of wood connecting to each other in this photo.
This was a wooden retaining wall with a stone facade on the front. Over a short time, the hillside began to erode and the dirt started coming down the slope. This caused the retaining wall below to pull away and lean downward, taking parts of the facade with it. Don't use wood for retaining walls. They can be used for compacted and tiered hillsides, but not full on retaining walls.
Here we have a decent sized sink hole we inspected this week. From the top it doesn't look too bad... But once you poke your head inside, it gets a little more serious. The hole is a little over 7 feet deep and 5-6 feet wide. You can see that there are some very large tree roots in the background. The fact that these are exposed is a sort of blessing in disguise. They do help stabilize the surrounding area but it's still at risk of expanding. We proposed a exploratory investigation to see exactly what's going on and what's causing this too occur. I'll also add that it's only a few feet from the home's foundation and could create some serious structural issues if left without being properly handled.
This is just like Tetris when you try to flip your piece at the last second and it offsets everything. :(
Gottem again!
We inspected this old porte-cochère that had been slowly sinking and displacing over time. You can see that the deck at the top is clearly sloping down a few inches.
On a side note there is a Wild Orchid growing out of the middle of the second pictures eavestroughs that's at least awesome
Termite damage and dry rot do not go well together. Notice he's using a flashlight to crumble the wood to pieces.
Here's an old girder that's been split in half. We tried finding the missing piece but it was nowhere to be found and the cause isn't really known either.
This is what happens when an internal load-bearing wall doesn't have a sufficient supporting foundation beneath it. Notice the slope toward the wall.
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!
This is what it looks like when your pool has been leaking for many years and nothing has been done about it.
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?
ny problems with rodents? No, the come and go as they please. Slugs too.
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...
We lived in a house once that had a significant lean, if you put anything round on the table it would roll off, the fridge door closed automatically coz of the gravity and the outside foundation was bowed out. The roof leaked inside, the taps kept breaking, there was asbestos in the backyard and these are just some of the problems.
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.
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.
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 is not stupid or particularly bad. Walls need spacing reinforcement so the framing lumber doesn't buckle or fold to one side or the other. Sure, a few pieces of boards, plywood, or sheetrock could accomplish the task, but lumber costs money and drywall may not be suitable if that cellar is moist. The old solid core & panel doors are sturdy, but they probably weren't in good enough condition to reuse as doors. Someone killed two birds with one stone, reusing old doors so they didn't go to the landfill to reinforce the wall. It looks a little odd, but it gets the job done and reduces waste. It's not that uncommon in old houses which had foundation work & interior remodeling done, and I'd absolutely do this.
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.
We get calls about cracks in concrete on a daily basis. I would say 95% of the time they describe hairline cracks in concrete (which is normal) and cosmetic cracking in the house. THIS is the type of crack you should be concerned about. About an inch wide, displaced quite a bit and obvious settlement on one side. Luckily this was just the corner of the garage and not in the middle of the home.
This is a home that's sitting on an old brick foundation. The framing that connected the home to the brick foundation collapsed and the home is now cantilevered over the brick foundation about half a foot. Pretty gnarly.
Painting your concrete or CMU wall doesn't keep the moisture out. If you see this with your home, call out a waterproofing or drainage company.
This was a pretty old masonry wall that had cracked in half and was beginning to lean quite a bit. Also the dude to the left is about to do a crazy front flip.
This is one of the best photos that communicates what displacement looks like in a concrete foundation. You can see the framing above the foundation has broken apart and separated drastically. A solid crack like this will definitely show up in the above section of your home and will need immediate attention! This is just another case of Man vs. Nature. This tree root forced its way through this concrete foundation and caused some of the worst damage I've seen.
We did an inspection of this guest house on a property in LA. A portion of it was on an older CMU foundation but was at least supported in most places. The front portion however, was not. The perimeter was held up by random stones and rubble and same went for the piers underneath. At the bottom of this image you can see a very large rock acting as a main support for the mudsill.
You can see the chipping paint was obviously put in place to communicate the troubled past of the contractor. Amazing.
These are some very skinny piers with "posts" that are thicker than the concrete base of the pier. It's better than earth-to-wood contact though.
Here we have a unreinforced foundation that is decaying, settling and has framing that is rotting and pulling away from the concrete.
Here we have yet another old brick foundation. You can literally see the piles of dust from decayed mortar and brick. Yikes!
The concrete is decayed and weak in many places and should have never been poured in some walls.
Ah yes, that should do it.
A very interesting foundation/post & pier. You don't really see this type of concrete support often. You'll usually only see these in taller foundations.
This one is quite interesting. First off, you have the original brick foundation, which is composed of brick and what is now dusty mortar. Above that you have masonry blocks... and above that you have a reinforced cripple wall. This is a situation that should have never even been created. The bricks should have been replaced with concrete, which, in turn, would have created no need for the CMU blocks and then the foundation could have been properly retrofitted with proper shear panels and bolting. Yikes on this one!
This was a stilt home we inspected this past week. Due to local seismic activity and hillside erosion, this home has suffered some serious racking. Racking refers to when a building tilts and is forced from its original position into a new one. You can see that the structural members to the left are leaning down towards the hillside, causing some issues above.
This joist fell from its connection, and for obvious reasons, as it was attached to a foundation hodgepodge made of random materials.
A shoddy patch job. The concrete wasn't in horrible shape, but it still should have at least been strapped and not just mortared over.
Here we have another property that has some severe settlement. So much so that you can actually see the sloping of the brick pathway and dirt grade.
In most raised homes the concrete foundation should be the only part of the structure that would be below grade. Well, in the case of this home, the grade of the dirt goes all the way up past the cripple wall and into the framing of the home.
This was a property we inspected up in the Hollywood Hills. The caissons have been exposed due to hillside erosion and now the structure is beginning to lean down the slope. Scary stuff.
Here we have an old rock foundation. This doesn't appear to be as old as most of the ones we inspect, but still in need of a replacement or sister foundation at the very least.
Lots and lots of debris and random chunks of concrete and masonry. Almost all of the posts weren't braced and sitting on decayed concrete piers.
I show a lot of old brick foundations on here but they are always fascinating to me. I'm sure it made total sense for them to do this back in the day, for cost reasons and efficiency, but they sure do end up in pieces after a while. Granted, most foundations crumble after 100 years, but brick foundations especially cause trouble down the line. This one has quite obviously deteriorated quite a bit and in need of a good replacement or sister foundation.
Here you can notice the shattered glass and broken flooring with an exposed rock foundation.
I really don't know what is worse, the horrible condition of the river rock foundation or the 1-inch thick layer of dryer lint that has settled down over the entire crawlspace.
Or... the leaking pipes and earth-to-wood contact.
House inspectors don't always catch everything, but these pictures are an argument for never buying without getting an inspection done. I rejected a few houses because of the house inspector's findings, last time I was searching.
Too true. In some places, inspections are little more than a cursory glance. They don't go digging around to see if there's any problems.
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Quite a few of these should lead to the arrest of some builders, if you ask me!
Needs more photos of bases of support columns. They are SO interesting.
I can neither upvote nor downvote this until I know whether or not you are being sarcastic.
Load More Replies... Okay, so I understood what the one person was saying about different soil types and natural phenomenon that influence the way houses are built in different countries, but all of these foundations look crazy and scary as hell for someone from SA where we are literally thought about cement foundations in high school subjects. We don't have crazy crawl spaces. Are formal housing is solidly grounded.
I am totally horrified. The safety, the cost to repair!! It just goes on.
More true than you realize. People want hilltop views or waterfront beach houses, but those are probably the most risky areas to build in. Some of these pictures point to a local problem with inspections and enforcement of building codes, though.
Load More Replies... Every time I saw a brick in these pictures I started to think of Pink Floyd's song (Another Brick in the Wall). At the second to last picture, I just gave up humming and screamed at the top of my lungs the lyric to the song.
Inspections is very important, before buy a house you need them to go check what's underneath, even after you have been lived for many years you still need them to come check, prevent/avoid anything bad happens.
The cement workers who installed the sidewalk down the length of the 60 foot shop I inherited was right up against the OSB siding. A couple nails were sticking out about 1/4" from the frequent expansion and contraction of the siding from moisture being allowed against the siding bottoms, that would have gone south, if nothing were done.
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My first house had 2x4 floor joists set too far apart. It's a wonder nobody died before my wife and I fixed it.
We had to redo the basement floor. Base is concrete, on which there were slates and plywood. Plywood was curving because of too much humidity. Removed the tiles, the plywood and then the slates which were NAILED into the concrete. But they were so soft and rusty that I took them out with my bare hands. Lovely house.
My sister in law does, uh, fun stuff. She was going to fix the bathroom fan that wasn't working. Then wondered why the breaker was tripping and she had no lights in the bathroom. It MIGHT have had something to do with her guess at which wires to wire nut together. In this case, the black one and the white one. Then there was her detailing out the store she and my wife were selling. She put a plastic outlet cover on a duplex plug in a metal box. In the process, she touched the hot to the metal case in the process, tripping a VERY OLD breaker. Traced it down, but what a pain (the breaker no longer came back on). THEN there was her habit of powering everything, including the ice cooler, off extension cords. The breaker started tripping. Each end of the cord was feeding the cooler by just a couple threads of copper. Just a fire away from not having to sell the store.
I rented a house during the time everyone was playing house flipper. The owner wanted to sell it to me for a huge chunk. He claimed he had it inspected and there were no problems. I was in construction and formed my own opinion, after I found: 1) An uninsulated water line in the attic, laying on top of the ceiling supports. 2) The dishwasher was fed by an extension cord running in the attic. 3) 14 gauge Romex running outside, near the lowest piece of lap siding, tucked up against the bottom of the first piece of siding. . . . .
Do US cities not have building codes that must be adhered to? As J Labuschagne says below, in SA your house must have a foundation. If you build on a hillside, you use proper supports, with cantilever decks, etc.
There isn't an area in the entire united states that doesn't have a bunch of structures and things that qualify for being part of these photos.
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Terrific. These paper-like houses reminds me the hut on chicken foot from horror myths... A-hut-on-c...352f8f.jpg 
House inspectors don't always catch everything, but these pictures are an argument for never buying without getting an inspection done. I rejected a few houses because of the house inspector's findings, last time I was searching.
Too true. In some places, inspections are little more than a cursory glance. They don't go digging around to see if there's any problems.
Load More Replies... Quite a few of these should lead to the arrest of some builders, if you ask me!
Needs more photos of bases of support columns. They are SO interesting.
I can neither upvote nor downvote this until I know whether or not you are being sarcastic.
Load More Replies... Okay, so I understood what the one person was saying about different soil types and natural phenomenon that influence the way houses are built in different countries, but all of these foundations look crazy and scary as hell for someone from SA where we are literally thought about cement foundations in high school subjects. We don't have crazy crawl spaces. Are formal housing is solidly grounded.
I am totally horrified. The safety, the cost to repair!! It just goes on.
More true than you realize. People want hilltop views or waterfront beach houses, but those are probably the most risky areas to build in. Some of these pictures point to a local problem with inspections and enforcement of building codes, though.
Load More Replies... Every time I saw a brick in these pictures I started to think of Pink Floyd's song (Another Brick in the Wall). At the second to last picture, I just gave up humming and screamed at the top of my lungs the lyric to the song.
Inspections is very important, before buy a house you need them to go check what's underneath, even after you have been lived for many years you still need them to come check, prevent/avoid anything bad happens.
The cement workers who installed the sidewalk down the length of the 60 foot shop I inherited was right up against the OSB siding. A couple nails were sticking out about 1/4" from the frequent expansion and contraction of the siding from moisture being allowed against the siding bottoms, that would have gone south, if nothing were done.
Load More Replies... My first house had 2x4 floor joists set too far apart. It's a wonder nobody died before my wife and I fixed it.
We had to redo the basement floor. Base is concrete, on which there were slates and plywood. Plywood was curving because of too much humidity. Removed the tiles, the plywood and then the slates which were NAILED into the concrete. But they were so soft and rusty that I took them out with my bare hands. Lovely house.
My sister in law does, uh, fun stuff. She was going to fix the bathroom fan that wasn't working. Then wondered why the breaker was tripping and she had no lights in the bathroom. It MIGHT have had something to do with her guess at which wires to wire nut together. In this case, the black one and the white one. Then there was her detailing out the store she and my wife were selling. She put a plastic outlet cover on a duplex plug in a metal box. In the process, she touched the hot to the metal case in the process, tripping a VERY OLD breaker. Traced it down, but what a pain (the breaker no longer came back on). THEN there was her habit of powering everything, including the ice cooler, off extension cords. The breaker started tripping. Each end of the cord was feeding the cooler by just a couple threads of copper. Just a fire away from not having to sell the store.
I rented a house during the time everyone was playing house flipper. The owner wanted to sell it to me for a huge chunk. He claimed he had it inspected and there were no problems. I was in construction and formed my own opinion, after I found: 1) An uninsulated water line in the attic, laying on top of the ceiling supports. 2) The dishwasher was fed by an extension cord running in the attic. 3) 14 gauge Romex running outside, near the lowest piece of lap siding, tucked up against the bottom of the first piece of siding. . . . .
Do US cities not have building codes that must be adhered to? As J Labuschagne says below, in SA your house must have a foundation. If you build on a hillside, you use proper supports, with cantilever decks, etc.
There isn't an area in the entire united states that doesn't have a bunch of structures and things that qualify for being part of these photos.
Load More Replies... Terrific. These paper-like houses reminds me the hut on chicken foot from horror myths... A-hut-on-c...352f8f.jpg
