Housejacked: An Unsettling Tale
For D.C. Couple, Structural Makeover Was a Costly Lesson in Home Buying

By Wendy Bilen
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, March 3, 2007

Recently our 67-year-old brick house was accosted by men armed with hydraulics. No one was seriously hurt, but our bank account took a good beating.

My husband and I wanted a fixer-upper, so when we bought our brick Colonial in Northeast Washington last spring, we expected it to need work. We endured a three-hour inspection and noted the expert's suggestions. He said that there had been some settling, but that it had stopped. He told us that where the previous owners had caulked cracks, we should monitor them.

We realized the floor of the attached garage was cracked and that its ceiling tilted south. We also noticed the extra mortar and cracking in the same vicinity, but we chalked up all the problems to old-house character and normal wear and tear -- nothing we couldn't fix.

We soon learned that what we had considered character was actually collapse. Sure, the house could be fixed, but not by us.

Not until after we tore down the fiberboard in the bedroom above the garage and the plaster it was hiding did we understand the severity of our problem: The house wasn't done settling. In just months, already-substantial cracks had grown into gaping two- and three-inch chasms, and we measured a drop of more than four inches across the 11-foot bedroom. Removing an overhang above the garage door revealed even more substantial fractures, through which we could see the bedroom radiator from the driveway.

That's when we brought in a structural engineer, John Shuster of Geofreeze in Alexandria. Shuster diagnosed our problem as ongoing settling and proposed a solution: jacking the house back up using helical piers, giant screws that are secured several feet below ground and can support the foundation. The lifting would level the floors and close the cracks, as much as possible.

After securing permits through an expediter, who walked them through the approval process, the contractors dug six deep holes around the base of the sinking part of the house, drilled the steel poles 17 feet down, and attached them to clamps at the foundation. A very patient man chipped away mortar that would hinder the lift. Hydraulic pressure then raised the creaking house, first three-quarters of an inch, and finally another two inches -- the walls were too precarious to continue -- before the jacks were interred within concrete. The permit process took months; the setup, days; and the raising, minutes. It cost us about $11,000.

When people ask, I tell them we've been housejacked.

Tips for the Untrained Eye

Although we were satisfied with the outcome, if we had known the extent of the structural problems before we moved in, we probably would not have purchased the house. At the very least, we would have negotiated a lower price.

How does a home buyer who has not been trained as a structural engineer avoid this sort of situation? Shuster, as well as Phil Schied, his counterpart at Jessup firm Levelift Systems, provided practical tips on what to look for before buying:

· Examine the mortar. The presence of new mortar, or old mortar showing new cracks in a "stair-step" pattern, suggests recent or ongoing structural movement, Shuster said. If the home sellers have not already disclosed the issue, ask what interventions they have tried, if any, and how recently. Major settling should have stopped early in the life of the house.

Because inspectors are not necessarily trained structural engineers, they might not catch the problem, or grasp the extent of it. Although my husband noted extra mortar and stair-step cracks above the garage before we purchased, our inspector said that the mortar was old, so the settling must have been as well. Calling in an expert might be expensive, but it is likely to cost less than being stuck with the problem later.

· Sniff out water damage. Just as a river gradually erodes its banks, water left to run down or pool around a house can weaken mortar or rot framing. Any outside walls subject to runoff should sport flashing and gutters, and the ground should slope away from the house. Schied advises checking for low horizontal cracks, which indicate long-term water damage.

Even if you don't see cracks or water in the basement, a musty smell is a dead giveaway that water has cozied up to the house and stayed awhile. Waterproofing on most basements is good for only 20 years or so. Unless homeowners employ other drainage measures, the concrete, which Shuster says works like a paper towel, will suck up water until it's saturated. Running a dehumidifier in such cases is akin to blow-drying a paper towel that continues to sit in a puddle.

· Look for bowing and sagging. Interior walls can suffer the same fate as people lying on old mattresses: They are pulled toward the center. A floor exposed to moisture, especially one over a crawl space, tends to warp downward, dragging the walls along with it. A simple level can reveal which walls are leaning and whether a pattern exists.

· Distinguish between normal and severe cracks. Plaster is one of the first clues to damage, exhibiting cracks where the wall is being pulled in different directions. According to local plaster and stucco expert Reggie Bullard, of R.T. Bullard in Woodbridge, buckling and horizontal cracks generally seen near doors and windows indicate weak plastering and can be easily fixed. However, deeper diagonal cracks signal problems with the walls themselves.

· Check for stubborn doors and windows. Those that don't open and shut as they should are a clue that walls have shifted, Schied said. On the wall where we noted the extra mortar and cracks, we were unable to lock the window. That the window was newer should have clued us in that the settling had continued.

· Inquire about retaining walls. Because retaining walls are prone to move, their very presence threatens the soil surrounding a house. Of highest concern are those recently constructed or replaced, which have loosened the dirt and therefore traumatized the nearby foundation. It is especially critical that the dirt be tamped down after any construction to reduce the possibility of settlement. Our neighbor informed us that when the retaining wall near our garage was replaced a year before we moved in, the workers merely shoveled the dirt back into the hole.

· Scope out large trees. A slab foundation that does not go down beyond the water table (about three feet) may be affected by what's beneath. In our case, the only significant settling that occurred was in the non-basement portion of the house. Roots from large yet still growing trees often invade the soil under a foundation. Ordinarily this is not a significant problem unless there's a drought. In a dry summer, the trees soak up any water they can get, which further depletes the soil. As a result, the dirt compacts, causing the house to shift and settle. Shuster explained that soil around trees can shrink several inches, and even when the water table returns to normal, the ground will not regain its full volume.

Some cracks are seasonal; during the dry summer months, they expand, and during the wetter winter months they contract. Last summer, the longer we went without rain, the more our cracks expanded. In such seasons, keeping the ground moist, not saturated, can help prevent additional damage.

· Get the dirt on the dirt. In this region, many soils are prone to consolidation under the weight of a house. With gravelly or granular soils, settling tends to occur immediately. With clay, it takes much longer. Whereas old houses were generally built on whatever land the owners had, newer construction often involves fill soil brought from another location. It's important to ask whether the fill soil was uniform and compacted. If made up of different materials, the soil -- and therefore the house -- may settle at different rates. Also, if the fill was not tamped down, more significant settlement is likely as the house compacts the soil.

If soil is a concern, hire a geotechnical engineer for a soil study, which will provide the information you need to consider probable consequences.

Tallying Up the Damages

Most if not all of these problems can be fixed. The goal is to find out before rather than after you purchase your house, because permanent solutions are often time-intensive and costly.

"Get an objective determination of the cost, what is going to be required to mitigate the cost and how much that is in dollars," Shuster said. "The problem becomes identified, quantified by qualified personnel, and then it becomes a bargaining chip in the negotiating process."

While many structural problems are not within a homeowner's control, disclosing known problems is. Shuster noted that "there is a difference between a 'good face' and fraud." The trick is differentiating between the two.

We still have some cosmetic tuck-pointing work to do on the outside of our house, and the north side still slopes. At least now, however, we can officially call that character.