Vertical Vs. Horizontal House Foundation Cracks Explained! What You Need To Know!

John Laforme and YC from SoCal Seismic Construction House Bolting discuss foundation issues, emphasizing the commonality of cracks in raised foundations. YC explains that vertical cracks are typically caused by improper drainage and can be repaired with epoxy injection and metal straps. Horizontal cracks, however, indicate foundation failure due to rebar issues. They highlight the importance of proper drainage and rain gutters to prevent foundation problems.

 Contact Information
SoCal Seismic House Bolting
323-770-9611
https://www.ycbuilder.com/

Vertical Cracks

• Common Causes:
  • Settlement of the foundation.
  • Shrinkage of concrete as it cures.
  • Minor shifts in the soil beneath the foundation.
• Are They a Problem?
  • Small, hairline vertical cracks (less than 1/8 inch wide) are generally not a serious concern and are considered a normal part of a building's aging process.
  • Larger vertical cracks, or those that widen over time, may indicate settlement issues or excessive pressure from expanding soil or water.
• When to Worry:
  • The crack widens or shows displacement.
  • Water leakage occurs through the crack.
  • The crack appears suddenly after extreme weather or seismic activity.

Horizontal Cracks

• Common Causes:
  • Lateral pressure from soil outside the foundation, especially in areas with high clay content or frost heaving.
  • Hydrostatic pressure caused by excessive water accumulation around the foundation.
  • Poor drainage or waterproofing.
• Are They a Problem?
  • Horizontal cracks are typically more concerning than vertical ones because they can indicate serious structural stress, such as bowing or bulging foundation walls.
  • Cracks wider than 1/4 inch or those accompanied by inward movement of the wall may signal a risk of collapse.

Transcript

John Laforme: 0:00

Buying a home. Don't panic, just listen to the rest of this podcast. Okay, today's guest is yc from SoCal seismic construction sir, aka house bolting. So anyway, I want to get right into this, because, you know, today we're going to talk about foundations. Everybody I've been, I've been trying to get a foundation contractor. Oh, did I say contractor? You did a foundation person on the show here for quite some time. A lot of, a lot of the foundation guys I've met so far have been kind of introverts, and they don't like to talk, and they just flat out said that I understood. That's cool. Then I met you, and I can't shut you up. There we go. So that's why he's here, all right? So the first thing I want to talk about is poured concrete, raised foundations. So I got some pointed questions for you, and this is coming from my experience on the job as a home inspector, and that that's because, you know, I have to report cracks, right? And I have to report, you know, moisture intrusion. I have to report of, you know, lack of anchoring and house bolting and all that stuff. So, you know, first question is, for this is for homeowners, how common are foundation cracks?

YC: 1:17

That's a great question. Very common. You know, I would say that if we inspect 10 homes, nine of them with the raised Foundation, are going to have cracks. The question is, you know, how severe are the cracks? That's right, right, right.

John Laforme: 1:30

Now, does a foundation crack indicate the house is going to collapse?

YC: 1:35

No, depends on, you know, the direction of the crack. Majority of the time the cracks are vertical and they can easily be repaired. So it's not like you're gonna freak out and you're gonna fall through your

John Laforme: 1:45

floor Exactly, and that's, that's the biggest fear my customers have. And I this is a daily thing for me, and so I have to approach this, approach this with very monotone voice, right? You have a crack? I think I'm not gonna go, Oh my God, you have a crack. All right. It's all about how you say it. All right. Oh, okay. So what do we do? Well, you have a foundation person come out, and what they'll do is they'll probably recommend filling it and then bolting it Correct, correct. Does it mean it's gonna come back? That's question for

YC: 2:16

you. Yep, majority of the cracks around the premier of stem wall foundation or cripple wall Foundation are actually caused by drainage, improper drainage, right? So ultimately, it could be, you know, a one time fix, and you're done. We do a epoxy injection and we strap it, yep. And we usually never have to come back and do anything after

John Laforme: 2:30

that. The building is not doomed if you have foundation cracks, unless we get to a more severe crack, which we will get to soon, yes. So horizontal crack versus vertical cracks, which is worse horizontal?

YC: 2:43

Okay? And why is that good question? Horizontal cracking indicates foundation failure. Rebar, the structural component of the concrete. In the concrete, it's the metal, it runs horizontally. So when you have that horizontal crack, you automatically have foundation failure. So if you were to think about horizontal cracks versus vertical, automatically. Just remember horizontal is worse, right off the bat, right? Because especially you could see that rebar coming through even worse at that point. But automatically, we can't just go and put epoxy in straps,

John Laforme: 3:11

exactly. So on that note, I got some photos here to look at it all right? So this is one of your images right here. Thank you. Thank you for the visual aids. Very hopeful, sure. So what we're looking at here on photo one here is we got a vertical crack on the left, and that's before the repair. And as you can see on the right, it's got the epoxy filling. By the way, the epoxy is there. Is there a certain type of epoxy? What's it's

YC: 3:34

a good question. So we actually do epoxy, and a concrete mix gives a little bit of a thicker, you know, texture. Epoxy itself, in general, has a little bit of a runny water type of texture to it. So ours is mixed with with con So

John Laforme: 3:46

is this something I can go buy at Home Depot when a cocking gun?

YC: 3:50

No, it's a nipple system. I mean, you could buy them from suppliers, but you got to know what you're doing. We don't just shoot it in. It's basically starts in the bottom and it works its way up with a nipple pattern. And we fill in each nipples. I see

John Laforme: 4:01

start from the bottom, work around, okay, cool, all right. And as far as the metal straps go, you get six, you get 12 bolts. Now, how long are those bolts?

YC: 4:10

The average is half inch by five inch so five inches in, five inch depth, yep. Well, that's, that's pretty deep. Yep, yep. And then it depends on the, you know, the height of the crack. Sometimes we just have to put one strap depending on the height, you know, the foundation. Majority of cracks do require two straps, though. Majority of them, okay, especially if it's a corner crack.

John Laforme: 4:28

Okay. So, have you ever inspected a house where the foundation was complete failure all the way around? Hell, yeah.

YC: 4:34

Happens all the time. We we inspect them on the weekly basis. Unfortunately, hillsides, not only hillsides, so regular, you know, flat lots, you'll have that, you know, a lot of the times, you know, people ask me, How long does concrete last? What is the lifespan of concrete? It's a good question, you know. But ultimately, if you really think about it, it depends on so many factors. But the biggest one would be, what do you think, John, biggest factor would be

John Laforme: 4:55

the outdoor, outdoor conditions. You

YC: 4:57

go the drainage. Is

John Laforme: 4:57

there any drainage? Is there any rain gutter? Years, do you have a negative grade, 100% all those things? It's always the same, the same, same problem, right? It's always, it's always going to be the same problem. Almost always, it speeds up the process. And some houses are a perfect storm. They have everything against them. And I've actually seen those houses. I'm like, You know what? You know what? You got a perfect storm. Like, what do you mean? I'm like, Well, you got no gutters, right? You get negative grade. You've got a hillside over here running right onto your property with no retaining wall. You get nothing but water coming right towards this building. It's been, like, that's for what, 6070, years, depending on how old the house was, yep. So those are, those are very, very common finds right there. And another

YC: 5:40

side point on that would be, you know, majority of those houses that we do see that you're mentioning right now, you know, have the most beautiful landscape, because they have so much water. The roses are always blossoming, yeah? You know, the fruit trees have the most amazing fruits, and the homeowners always so proud, you know, yeah, I've lived here for 4550 years, and I'm just thinking, oh, man, you know,

John Laforme: 6:00

that's what they all say. I've been here 40 years in that water heater works fine. All right, there you go. So you never changed it. Okay?

YC: 6:08

She's just showering with cold water, right? And

John Laforme: 6:11

what? And what's the, I think you mentioned this already, but let's, I'm gonna ask it again, what's the visual when I'm looking at a foundation under house as a home inspector or even a homeowner, yeah, what's, what's the visual part of it that's going to determine foundation failure? Good

YC: 6:26

question. So I wouldn't use the word foundation failure till we get underneath, because, you know, the visual from the outside, the exterior or even inside, you can't really determine if it's foundation failure. But I could give you a few signs. The first thing would be doors above the cracks, you know, cracks above the doors of windows at a 45 degrees. So, you know, if you have those 45 degree cracks coming, coming off, yeah, usually indicates settlement, you know, if you, if you step outside, away from the front door and kind of look at the house visually, you know, take a look at the rain gutters. Are they, you know, leading underneath the house. Are they, you know, the rain gutter downspout. Is it right by the soil of the house, right? All these little things, do you even have rain gutters? So a lot of the times you'll have these, you know, these factors come into play. Those are the common those are the most common things, interior cracks, unlevel floors. Now,

John Laforme: 7:08

give it to me when you go under the house and what not. Now, tell me what you'd if I was under there and I saw what, what would what do you think would tell me? Yeah. So during the

YC: 7:17

inspection, the property and surroundings are inspected for, you know, foundation drainage, seismic retrofitting, reinforcing things like that, beams, post cracks. Ultimately, you have to understand that the weight of the home sits on the perimeter. A lot of people think that the weight of the home sits on the posts and piers that just holds the really people think that. A lot of people think that, wow, if you take out the post and peers, the whole house will fall and it's not the case. The weight of the home sits on the perimeter. So the most important thing for us, right off the bat, when we first go out there, is we do a perimeter check. We check the entire perimeter. We look for settlement. Look for gaps between the silplate and the foundation. We know. We determine the age before we even start crawling. You know, how old is this house? Oh, yeah, deteriorated concrete, exposed rebar, horizontal cracks. And you know, if you look at the foundation you have all those issues. We're not necessarily calling out a foundation replacement, but you know, there are, there are factors that determine what we're going to do to repair

John Laforme: 8:07

it, right? Gotcha. Okay. So here's something I run into a bit in inside garages, okay, on older homes, the floors that seem to be lifting is that called uplift. Yep. Uplift, yep. Okay, so, so Now correct me. If I'm wrong. I think I got this one. Let's hear it. The garage floor is not part of the foundation. It's simply a floor correct? Because on the edges of all that floor, you're going to have your stem wall for the garage. Correct? That's built when the rest of the house is built, typically, unless it was an add on that was added later, right? Additional garage. So when I see that I'm not calling that out as a foundation problem, calling that out as a concrete floor problem, right? And there's a couple ways to deal with it. You can, you can grind it down and then fill the cracks so it's not a trip hazard. Or you can replace it, right? So what causes the uplift?

YC: 9:01

Good question. So majority of the uplift would be caused by two things. The first thing I would say is something called hydrostatic pressure. So you have that pressure coming from below and kind of pushing up on it. That pressure could be water it'd be high water table area. Certain parts of Eagle Rock have that where you have that high water table area, and you'll have that, you know, slab lift up. Ultimately, if you really think about it, majority of those people like to send out, grind out, whatever you want to call it, and they epoxy it, yeah, so you know, it looks good, has a great finish on it, but it's not a structural component of the home, right? It's a separate pour that's important. It's a very important thing. And I think that if you look at new construction builds in general, when they're building the house, a lot of times they'll finish pouring in the garage later on, because they store heavy equipment in there. They're bobcats, whatever it is, while they're in that meantime of transitioning to a new job site, yeah? Or they're storing all their tiles, so a lot of times unfinished, right? So people think, Oh, I've, you know, garage slabs. My house is falling down. It's not good. Jackhammer and report if you want, yeah, unless it's a post tension, don't touch post tension. Yeah, we'll talk about. That

John Laforme: 10:01

don't if you're if you have a stamp on your garage floor and it says post tension, do not suck. Do not saw cut. No, we have a story about that. Yeah, don't be breaking out the side, testing it. That's right, not a good idea. Yeah, that's a different type of thing. But I'm not really talking about that right now. I'm only talking about the traditional garage slabs. Well, the floors are lifting up. And I always do express that to my customers. This is not a foundation problem here. This is something else causing this. Yep, it doesn't mean your house is falling down. You can fix it, you can read, you can redo it, or you can just repair it, yep. And

YC: 10:35

that would, that would be 95% of the time, you know, yeah, the other, you know, 5% would be different factors, you know, unveiled build on a hillside, you know, you know, hillside, yeah, that's different story. That's

John Laforme: 10:47

a whole different topic, right there. That's right. Okay, so the causes of a vertical crack are typically just from settlement, lack of drainage. Yeah,

YC: 10:55

I would say the majority of vertical cracks are caused by the exterior drainage. So you have that, you know, water coming through, the water intrusion right, softens up. The soil gets a little mushy. You have that settlement, and then that stress crack just, you know, goes vertical. So you're correct. It's okay. 99% of them are caused by that. Let's,

John Laforme: 11:16

let's dive into that a bit now. So we briefly discussed that already, but let's, let's just nail it home here. So once again, it's the exteriors of the home that caused the problems under the home. Majority of them, yes, yes, majority of them. And this is a, this is something I have to write up on a daily basis. I go to a house, first thing I'm looking for as I'm walking or drains. No drains. Recommend adding some drains. Then I'll walk around a look some more. No rain gutters. Oh, we don't need rain gutters in California. Yeah, you do, yep. And I got made, I've made specific videos on this, on my on my YouTube channel, so check them out, and you'll get, you'll get the point. Lack of rain gutters does more than just damage your foundation. It damages your siding, it damages your windows and doors. A lot of things can also happen from a lack of drainage, depending on where, what kind of house you have, and how it's laid out on the outside, no drains around the house, no rain gutters. And if you do have rain gutters, the downspouts are terminating at the Foundation, which is a no no, because that's just going to pull water. So what I always recommend to my customers is, look, I it's not raining today, so I can't tell you how your yard is going to perform under heavy, heavy water. So the best thing you can do get your rain coat on when it's down pouring, and then lock your property. You'll learn so much about your property and then take pictures. Don't just remember it in your brain, because when you call a contractor in the summer, when you want them to fix all those things, you get any photos, right? So unless there's clear evidence of standing water stains or any kind of water ponding around areas, they're not going to know. So videotape or take pictures of these heavy, heavy ponding areas, so you can show the person that's going to fix it for you. It's a great tip, yep. Another

YC: 13:06

thing I would mention on that John would be, you know, just because you have rain gutters, and you have rain gutter downspur, or if you get a rain gutter extension from Home Depot, telescoping, if you have soil touching the side of the home yeah, no matter what, you're going to have to fix that area. Yeah. So even if it's not raining and you're just looking on a regular, you know, hot summer day, know, hot summer day, no matter what, you're gonna have to correct that area. Yeah,

John Laforme: 13:26

yeah. So you want to make sure your grade slopes away from your house correct. So in the event of heavy rains, it doesn't go towards your house and sit you want it to go away as much as possible. There will still be some residual water getting in and some moisture. You can't you can't stop it completely, but you can definitely stop the bleeding. Yeah, we

YC: 13:42

always suggest waterproofing those areas, because once you seal off the foundation, you're not going to have that water intrusion. It's going to completely seal it. But, you know, people don't remember that. You have to remember that concrete itself isn't waterproof. People think they're going to pour concrete on the side of their house, and they're fine, right? Concrete absorbs all that water

John Laforme: 13:58

and goes for that. So does stucco. So when you have the when you have these older homes with a stucco, they used to run it into the soil, and then they pushed the soil up against it. That's gonna wick water up. And I am proof, living proof of that. It happened on the back of my garage here, and I can show you that later watered it all out when I bought the house. The the rear concrete pad that the guy had some sheds on was too high, and it was run right into the stucco, oh, and the stucco into the stucco, and then it couldn't drain, and my whole wall started absorbing water. And I found out, because I was, I was finishing off the inside of the garage, and I'm like, why is there stains right there? And I put a moisture meat on it. Thing was soaked. Wow. I had to stop everything. Go outside. Jackhammer up that whole thing. Not fun. Cut off the stuck. I cut the stucco from the ground, and I made a nice three inch space, and put some weeps creed in bottom. You up.

YC: 14:50

Fix it. That's one section. Imagine a whole house. I

John Laforme: 14:52

know you know what I mean. So that's a real thing. So water does wick up inside stucco. So it's concrete, it's concrete. So mixtures,

YC: 14:59

I can go. That are like a straw, just, yeah, it absorbs. And

John Laforme: 15:03

if you get insulation inside that wall and the paper is bad,

YC: 15:06

I have mold, yep, replace that. Now

John Laforme: 15:09

you're talking about more problems. Okay, so let's touch on waterproofing a little more. So to waterproof a foundation, you have to excavate all the dirt out correct and how much, how much of that dirt are you removing, like, two feet from the wall. Good

YC: 15:19

question. So it just depends on how far to get down to the bottom of the footing. I see, you know, the average we, you know, horizontally from the house, I would say we average about four feet, okay, in length. Yeah. For our crew to get in there, they have to dig to the bottom of the footing, the pressure wash and sandblast the entire foundation wall to make sure that it's completely clean, otherwise it's not going to stick properly. Wow. They fix any cracks at that point. That's a part I wasn't aware of, yep. And then they go ahead and tar it. After they tore it, they apply waterproof membrane. Then, you know, depending on the situation, you're adding, drains backfill. So

John Laforme: 15:54

you're actually, you're actually covering the footing as well,

YC: 15:56

correct? We go all the way to the bottom of the footing. Wow, yeah. We go pretty as far as we can go with concrete. And

John Laforme: 16:02

while you're you got that all dug out of you, also recommending drains be put in that area Exactly.

YC: 16:06

So it really depends on the house, but majority of time we're adding a drink, you know, blow gray drain, then we, you know, have a surface drain on top. We have the backfill. We have rocks and mesh, so there's a jam and, you know, making a burrito, that's right, one of them is gonna be food poison.

John Laforme: 16:21

All right, cool. Okay, so as far as horizontal foundation cracks that are that are not so common, the main issue for that is moisture. Yes. Am I right? Yes. And

YC: 16:33

the majority of the times you'll see that would be on the other side of the foundation, have a planter, yes, yes, you'll have a yellow planter that the homeowner is so proud of that they're watering for all these years. Okay,

John Laforme: 16:44

so we got some pictures right here. Yeah, they are courtesy of SoCal seismic household thing. There you go. You That's right. Okay, so these are your photos. And what we're looking at here is you can see the horizontal cracks on the stem walls right here, and then on the middle picture, you can actually see the the rusted rebar, correct? So when rebar gets really wet, just so people understand it expands, and it just kind of like breaks out of the shell of the concrete. It's amazing that that has hatching. It's hatching. Isn't that crazy. It's

YC: 17:13

great. I mean, yeah. I mean, if you think about the concept of how that metal expands, you know, that's why you have that horizontal crack. And this middle picture was taken by one of our inspectors, but this is that section right here, right? We just, you know, peeled off that peeled off that corner, and right. Look what happened. Well, let

John Laforme: 17:28

me show you some, some my finds. Let's see it. I got some of those in here too. There you are, that one. So that's a partition wall, yep. So that's the middle of the home, and that's at least 10 feet to 12 feet long. And look how wet that is. Yep, yep. So this particular house was in Playa Del Rey area. The entire crawl space was wet. I put my

YC: 17:53

robot in there. Yeah, you're not doing the crawl and, well, I

John Laforme: 17:57

just, I just use a crawl. Bought a lot. So if it works, I utilize it. If it doesn't, I have to get in. So you first thing that goes in. That's my recon guy. You know? He goes and checks everything out make sure there's no animals that's right, or dead bodies. Yeah, we

YC: 18:08

always just crawl it, yeah. So, so

John Laforme: 18:11

anyway, so that this whole, as you can see, if you look at the tires on the corner of the picture, you see all the mud on my tires. So this whole thing was like this, and then it gets even better. Let me show you the next shot. There it is. So this is, this is the partition wall opposite the opening on the left. So as you can see there, that is that foundation is just saturated. Yep, that rebar has just come out. And it looks like that rebar is a little bit close to the edge there too. What do you think? Well,

YC: 18:39

it's, it is a corner, yeah, you know, but ultimately you have all that moisture crossing through. So, I mean, yeah, even if it wasn't, you would still have that failure. Okay,

John Laforme: 18:48

so with a situation like this, are you talking about replacing that partition wall? Yes, we have no choice but to replace it so you literally re support, cut it out and report. Yep,

YC: 18:57

we don't do sister foundations in general, because the where the home still sits on the existing foundation as failure. If our engineer designs something different, then we'll obviously implement that. But the first thing to do would be fix, you know, fix the drainage.

John Laforme: 19:10

No, no, that's not my question. My question is, how would you repair this to do a replacement? So, yeah, but I mean, what are the steps? Step one, we're

YC: 19:18

gonna have to support the floor joists. Okay, then we're gonna have to jackhammer all the concrete away, okay? And then we have to report. So we excavate, we dig down, but we won't again. We won't fix that until we fix the drainage, right, right, right, because then you're, you're paying so,

John Laforme: 19:32

so this is all on your belly work. Oh yeah, this is, this is like intense manual labor. Where

YC: 19:38

was the access point?

John Laforme: 19:39

The Access Point was just to the left. How many feet would you say?

YC: 19:43

I'd say about 2020. Feet. So in a particular situation like this, 20 feet, I mean, think about hauling concrete 20 feet. Usually we'll just cut a new access point, yeah, make it easy for the guys to work. A lot of people say, oh, you know, another company came out here. We have foundation failure, but the access point is right above that same area. Yeah, well, now we're going through your house. It's still easier to call it cut

John Laforme: 20:04

an exchange someone's house.

YC: 20:06

So it's not a fun project, you know, it's a lot of labor work, and it obviously does cost. I can't give you an exact number, but you know, the average, you know, 15, $20,000 depending on the section you're replacing, right? It really depends on, yeah, this is not the perimeter home. This is the middle, yeah, a little bit different.

John Laforme: 20:23

So that's why everybody listening, that's why it's so expensive to do foundation work. You literally got to support the weight of the house and then remove something. Yeah, it's a lot of labor, and you get safety. First, they get to make sure this thing's not going to implode on them and fall down. And

YC: 20:38

then within our own crew, you know, you know, every crew has a foreman, and he's gonna be the one to determine how many guys he's gonna allow underneath the house. If it's tight working conditions, he's not letting his whole crew under there. So he'll divide the crew with another job for that day until there's enough space, right, access for everyone to work safely, right? So that's our number one priority when it comes down to this. And

John Laforme: 20:57

you guys do sometimes have to trench out, remove dirt to do your work. Oh, we're

YC: 21:01

doing it today, yeah. And then put it back in, yep, if we need to put it back in. Sometimes it's just high soil underneath the house. I see a lot of times you'll find a house with extremely high soil levels, and you're thinking, Where does soil come from? And then you'll remember, there's an addition on the house. Instead of the contractor, Holland got all that soil, he threw it under the main house and rotted out all the posts and Piers. So that, I mean working on that right now. But happens all the time. We see this all the time, unfortunately, wow, yeah. So people always ask, where did the soil come from? That's what, that's where it usually came from,

John Laforme: 21:30

that. That was my, one of my main questions for you today was, on the on foundations, is the the, how much actual work goes into these repairs, and so, like, as a home inspector, you know, I have to relay this message, hey, look, I can see rebar that's been rusted, and your foundation is failure. It's failure. So, so would you recommend to a home inspector, if you see something like this and the picture I previously showed you, do you think it's safe for us to say you have a section of your foundation that's failed.

YC: 22:01

So I wouldn't use the word failure, because it sounds like you're now calling out shots that might be beyond my scope, scope of work. And now I'm not saying that in a bad way, right? You know, they're just gonna reference, Well, John said, I have failure. You know what I mean, they're gonna know how it works. So I would just recommend, you know, having, you know, foundation company come out there, versus, you know what, I mean, yeah, versus calling it out. It's kind of the same thing we like to mention the homeowners and home inspectors about, you know, up to code, bolts and things like that, yeah? But it's obviously our problem, but, you know,

John Laforme: 22:30

yeah? All right, so calling it out, the way I've been calling it out, should be fine, yeah, even though I know what it is, you won't, you

YC: 22:37

won't catch a claim. All right,

John Laforme: 22:41

so that's so what we just discussed right here was, you know, raised stem walls, and we're going to get into other types in a minute. But anything else you want to add to, you know, just general cracks, any kind of stuff you want to add that I might not have mentioned

YC: 22:59

to you, it's a good question. I would mention, you know, the, and I keep going back to this, because it's such a big point, is that, and this is an attention to old homeowners. When you go to a property or when you go to a house, you go to a friend's house and everything like that. You could also mention it to your to your friends, to your buddies. A lot of people just think it's their own house. I mean, think about your family members, your friends. Yeah, you go over there for a barbecue, you know, pointed out to them. I think that, you know, having a rain gutter extension, you know, worse comes to worse as your last resort will still save you on foundation issues, right? Just, you know, $10 from Home Depot makes a big difference, sure. So you can

John Laforme: 23:34

try to stop the bleeding for the most minimal cost, right? And that would be one of them, right there. Yep, yep. But, like I said, it's, it's crucial to just walk your property when it's really, really down, not when it's sprinkling, when it's downpouring. Just look at what your yard's doing. How's it dealing with the water? I mean, you'll learn a lot from that. Yeah, yeah. Well, because I've been on, I've been to inspections in the downpours, yeah, oh, man, yes. Same here. I opened up the garage door, and there's five feet of water in the garage, at least an inch Anne, inch deep. And I was like, come here, guys. You need to see this. I pulled everybody from inside. Come look at this. Right here. It's, it's easy to show you. Oh, yeah, visually, yeah. So yeah, that was, that was a real thing. And I actually added that to one of my videos I put out on on my YouTube channel too. Because I was like, wow, that's really important for people to see

YC: 24:20

that. Yeah, and all of our inspections are trained, you know, to find negative grade, negative slopes, things like that, prior to the rain. But you are right. Ultimately, the best scenario would be when it is downpouring, right?

John Laforme: 24:29

So one question I have here, going back to photo one here, yeah, if I, if I told the customer, hey, you know, you get three cracks that look just like this, what's that cost? That's good

YC: 24:40

question. So I mean, the average price for a crack repair is usually $350 average price. It's not crazy, right? But again, we have to determine what caused it in the first place, right? Sometimes they're hairline cracks, so we don't even recommend fixing them, right? But it just depends. I mean, that's your average price, right? You know it could vary. Sometimes you were charging 1500 somebody 100. Really depends with so many, yeah, so many different factors.

John Laforme: 25:02

Okay, so one thing I noticed about you so far, this is the second time I've met you in person. It seems like you really care about what's causing these problems, as opposed to just going there and getting a check and leaving

YC: 25:15

correct and I think a lot of companies just go in there and fix it and leave it's unethical to think about it. It is I was mentioning at my, my presentation in Long Beach, that it's like, you know, giving somebody a Porsche with three tires. I mean, it looks good, but it's not going to perform. Yeah, you know what I mean. So exactly, if you have a crack here, it's almost like the foundation is kind of talking to you, right, what caused it? We'll go ahead and fix it, but Right?

John Laforme: 25:39

And if you have a really good home inspector. He may have

YC: 25:42

already we know what to look for. I know who to I know who to refer.

John Laforme: 25:46

Yeah, so I'll be referring you, because, like I said, second time meeting you, and I like talking to you, and it seems like you really give a shit about what you

YC: 25:54

what you're doing. And all our 32 employees too, you know, they're all very dedicated, and it's a lot they're on the field, and they're all hard working. So that's not me. It's, it's all my guys on the field. Yeah, it's a team. Yep, it's a team. And the office can forget about the office. Yes, and your, I met your assistant. Yep, there you go. And

John Laforme: 26:11

what's her name again? Yulia. Yulia. Yep. Yulia. Hi, Yulia.

YC: 26:15

There you go. Shout out to Yulia. And Isabella. Isabella, oh,

John Laforme: 26:18

I met her. You kind of mentioned on the repair for the for the really bad, like, Well, that was just a that was just a partition wall. So would a partition wall repair be any different than a perimeter wall?

YC: 26:30

It's almost the same, same thing, yeah, yeah. It's easier to do a perimeter wall than a partition wall, really, yeah. So with the middle of the home versus you can access it from the exterior. It's right there, yeah? Crawl and crawl out. You know, sometimes our engineer will design a post and peer assembly system, so we just basically lift it up off that area and support both sides that we don't have to touch it. But I can't call that shot till the engineer designs it. Majority of the case don't like doing that. All right. So

John Laforme: 26:56

let me end this segment here with, uh, reminding everybody, if you're buying a home, don't panic, as the shirt says. And if you have a foundation crack, don't panic, because typically it can just be repaired. Yep, and it's not the end of the world. Stop watching those bad YouTube videos out there and stop. Stay off. Stay off. Tick tock.

YC: 27:14

There's a lot of those. There's a lot of those bad videos freaking people out. Wow.

John Laforme: 27:18

The number one thing that people, I will, I will tell a customer, oh, by the way, you have a 35 year old HVAC system. Your water heater is 20 years old. Yep. I'll tell them all this stuff, and it goes in one air out the other, yep. And then they can I show you something, John, sure, they show me a hairline crack on the drywall inside the house. I'm like, God, they're kidding. Me. Stop thinking like that. All right, that's cosmetic. If I told you I can't open your doors and you've got in your windows are all stuck. And, Yep, you got floor deflection everywhere. And I tell you, get 40 foundation cracks. Different story, different story. Yep. All right, so thanks for coming on the show. Sure we have, we have many more segments to get to, so he will be back. That's right. You.