CMU, Brick and River Rock Foundations And What You Need To Know!

John Laforme and YC with SoCal Seismic Foundation discuss the pros and cons of CMU (concrete masonry unit), brick and River rock foundations. They note that many older CMU foundations are hollow and difficult to retrofit, while brick foundations are often unreinforced and non retrofit-able. They emphasize the importance of inspecting for anchor bolts and rebar, which indicate a foundation's structural integrity. They also discuss the high cost of foundation replacements, averaging $85,000, and the challenges of dealing with historical homes. The conversation highlights the need for proper training and education for inspectors and the importance of working with specialists for foundation repairs.

Transcript

John Laforme: 0:00

Buying a home. Don't panic, just listen to the rest of this podcast.

YC: 0:09

What is the CMU foundation? CMU is concrete masonry units, basically a block, okay, concrete block. A lot of homes that are modular are built on CMU foundations, and a lot of homes that were moved were built on CMU foundations. So CMU foundation is literally a cinder block. Yep, there are pros and cons to having a CMU Foundation. In my opinion, the majority of the CMU foundations we find that are not, you know, original, sorry, that are not new construction. Are going to have issues. They're not going to be filled with concrete, they're going to be hollow. And you can't really do much with a hollow Foundation, which is why we do testing. There it is,

John Laforme: 0:48

right? So as far as having a CMU concrete block foundation, can it be anchored? Yep, it could be, if it's full with concrete, if it's filled, yep. And you only way you're going to know that is by drilling it.

YC: 1:02

Yep. So there are inspectors that have a hammer test that you kind of tap around, and you will be able to find the hollow spots. But what does that really mean? Though, you know what I mean, if you have a hollow spot and then one spots full, that means you're an improper pour in the first place. So that means one section will hold the other section won't. We can't really retrofit that. If you think about it, it's not going to make sense. Yeah, keep drilling till we find a hot spot. What about low 11?

John Laforme: 1:21

You know me, knowing how the burritos built, that's how it is. I look at right? I look at these, and I'm like, not the way I would go. It's not the way I'd want it. But I wouldn't freak

Unknown: 1:29

out, though. So I mean, if this was a new construction, obviously it wouldn't look like this. But if it was a newer construction, there would be no problem with it. Would have rebar, would have concrete. It would be up to code. You would see the anchor bolts with the square washers. Now,

John Laforme: 1:40

what year would I be able to maybe anticipate that this the CMU may be filled and have rebar,

Unknown: 1:50

so I wouldn't go by year, because then that depends on the builder. And again, the builder is not just a rough idea, yeah, but I will tell you some of that will be more accurate. If you go to a CMU foundation and you look at the anchor bolts, if you have anchor bolts, first of all, that's a good sign, yep. And the second thing is, if the anchor bolts are square, that's a good sign, yes. So I wouldn't reference it based on year. I would reference it based on those visual aspects. Does that mean? Okay, sure. Because what if the house was moved, right? Just too many factors start giving in dates. It just wouldn't make too much sense. Okay, gotcha. But look, look out for those, if it has anger bolts, okay, square, watch square or circular. Circular is not going to be up to coat. It's the square brick.

John Laforme: 2:30

Brick foundation is my favorite. So here's one, yep, that I came across. This was a 1906 house, and some of some of the brick, well, a lot of the brick was visible, and some of it wasn't. Some of it was skim coated over the famous skim coat. But think about this for a second. Okay, if it was skim coating on the outside of the building, I would understand them doing it for esthetics, right? But these guys are skim coding in the crawl space. You tell me why? To hide it. That's right. The only reason to do that is to hide it. Here's the best part on this particular house, my picture. I didn't my picture didn't come out. Great of it, but I do have a photo, and you can actually see the bricks coming through. Oh yeah. It's almost like it was just finished. Oh God. They just skim coated, and it was still wet in some areas, and it didn't dry. And you can see the outline of the bricks, yeah. Oh no, no bricks here. No bricks here, by the way. Don't look at the bricks underneath the piers. I mean, at the post, the post. So another dead giveaway. And the funniest part is all that work they did, skim coated, tried to hide it, and they left bricks, yeah, no, no, on the ground. Oh, really, this one's Oh, really, yeah. I was like, Wow, these guys, you're

Unknown: 3:58

on point, John. You know, another dead giveaway would be the bricks underneath the post and Piers. Yeah, South Pacific. I mean, there's a ton of these houses that have break river rock, parts of Eagle Rock, you can't do much with it. And one of the biggest things, if you want to go back to the brick foundation photo that you popped up a lot of, a lot of the things we see with with home inspectors, and again, I do weekly classes for educational purposes, for home inspectors, for reasons like this. Over the years, this has come up, which is why we started how to identify things, right? So they'll write unreinforced masonry. Recommend retrofitting, and I'm thinking, it's unreinforced, there's no rebar. It's not structural. No way to do it. Can't retrofit. Now, the client will buy the house retrofitting, thinking, yep, hey, I want to get a quote for retrofitting my brick foundation. You can't. You can't retrofit. Another thing I'll write is Brick foundation no anchor bolts present.

John Laforme: 4:55

That means, that means that person, that particular inspector, doesn't. Not have adequate training to be looking at that house he's looking at Correct? That's all it means. I'm trying to throw him under the bus. Look, we I don't know everything either, but if you are gonna put yourself out there to inspect any building that comes up, right, you need to

Unknown: 5:17

train. And this is why we do our educational course. I mean, you don't know, we used to, you know, depending on which company we work with, we'll do a presentation, and we'll show them the defects in their actual report. Obviously, I'm not mentioning any names, but this is an educational aspect that people don't realize. You there's a reason why there are no anchor bolts, because the bolts can hold into brick, right? And people don't realize that. And when I say people, I mean a lot of the inspectors, a lot of agents, will even question this. Well, you know, the house has been standing. Why don't you just skim coat it? You know, you can't. It's not a structural reinforcement. It's not and good luck getting insurance on a house like this. Yes, that's another aspect of telling clients, and a lot of it's just visual, you know, brick foundation. If you were insurance company, would you want to insure someone? Oh, hell no, dude. And if you did, your premiums would be crazy. Yeah, you know. So that's someone to take into consideration. I mean, look at the bricks. Just fine. Mean, look at the bricks just falling out, yeah? And by the way, a lot of these houses built back here, they're cross stories, yeah, the craftsmen beautiful, and they're beautiful homes two stories, yeah, yeah. The thing is, and I'm going to mention this as as a, as a, not as a side point, but really as my main point. A lot of people think that this was, you know, an issue when they built it, they didn't know. I mean, back in the day, this was a standard thing, they didn't intentionally build a house and say, let me screw the guy down. 50 years, 6070, years from now. This is not, this has done caveman style, yeah, this is exactly. But, I mean, look at the look at the type of wood they're using, though some of them are just back then, there was no electricity. They had torches the good old

John Laforme: 6:42

days. I so anyway, yeah, so brick is, to me, it's FUBAR. Yeah, there's nothing you can do with it except rip now. Can you replace

Unknown: 6:50

it? We do them all the time. Okay, yep, same system. I

John Laforme: 6:54

only want to see the invoice on that. They're not fun. It's not fun, I bet. But I mean, if you really had to have that house, I mean, let's say it was a, I love craftsman. Yeah, I love it too. Yeah, beautiful. If they're done well. And I've been in some cherry ones, like the person there, like, kept it up the whole time. Oh, damn. Look at this house. I love to buy this. Make believe that perfect specimen of a craftsman. What I mean by that is the wood is intact. Oh, yeah. And you have a brick foundation that, to me, is worth saving because a craftsman that might be a historical area? Yeah, most

Unknown: 7:26

of them are there, yeah. HPO say Historic Preservation overlaid so. But I think you're right, but it's worth doing. They do, that's the thing. They'll go ahead and fix it. The smart ones will, the smart ones will fix it.

John Laforme: 7:37

As long as you get if you can stand on your wallet,

Unknown: 7:40

then you're good. Also think about it like this, John, a lot of the times you'll they, they'll get credit for a bread Foundation, ah, it's expensive, though. I mean, the average, like I said, $85,000 for foundation replacement, yeah, so it really depends on the transaction. 5000 Yeah, average. That's the average. You know, 2000 square foot home. I thought it'd be more depends. Yeah, that's why I average it, yeah, the better. I mean, we're doing now. It's in Santa Monica. It's 120 Monica. It's 120 right? So,

John Laforme: 8:04

so this is a different house, yep. Is that a chimney? Yeah, figures. And I'm standing in a pit in a basement under this house. So that's, you know, all, no, no, this is this whole there's like a circle around me. Oh, and it's all brick supporting the crawl space soil. Wow. So

Unknown: 8:23

that this was used for, you know why they have that circle? Uh, no, they would sing Kumbaya in the middle.

John Laforme: 8:33

That's what it was used for. But anyway, look at the brick

YC: 8:35

in the background. I can see that there, yes. So they put a new beam in with posts with no peer, yep. I mean, 100% wrong. So they're gonna, what they're gonna say is, we did a lot of foundation reinforcement work there, yeah, but it's

John Laforme: 8:47

just not right, yep. And that brick chimney is gonna fail. And guess what has failed? And guess what, they're still more connected up the top.

Unknown: 8:56

Was it a two story, one story house? Can't remember. It could have been worse. It was two story, yeah. Look at the height of that.

John Laforme: 9:01

So imagine that thing caving in right here, and everything above it just comes ripping through the house. This is the Jenga block. That's gonna scare you. Might kill you. It might kill you might even kill. Yeah, so that's some crazy stuff with brick. So here's that same house that got skim coated. There it is. Look at this look at this wall. Now, when I showed up on this property. The first thing the realtor said, John, take a good look at this wall over here. So they knew it was like that before I even got

Unknown: 9:27

there. Was this a driveway on the other side?

John Laforme: 9:31

Yes, I figured, did you get called for it? No, I just figured, based on how this looks, yeah, so there's like, a little bit of a overhang out above this area and but you could see the the wood leaning forward. I may spot it as soon as I show I'm just looking at the front. I'm like, okay, that's an issue. I got checked out when I got the automatic foundation replacement. Yes, so this whole cripple wall is, like, disconnected, right? Non existent, Yep, yeah, disconnected. Yeah. And. It looks like the brick is leaning in right here too. So it starts playing

Unknown: 10:03

fail. So it's leaning in. And I see that right underneath the post over there. And I can go see the wall leaning to the right, yeah. So there's not much you can really do there. Ultimately, you just have to replace but if you look at the support system currently going on right now, there's one vertical stud here, and the rest is sitting on this beam. You see that? Yeah? So, I mean, there's really nothing supporting, no nothing, no framing, any I mean, this is

John Laforme: 10:23

and if, as I went further that way, there was a ton of termite damage there.

Unknown: 10:28

Also, what a terrible job skim coding. I've seen better jobs. It was not that it makes a difference, but it's horrible

John Laforme: 10:35

by the way. The entrance to get into here, all the brick was exposed, wow. So you can see it as soon as you're going in. I don't know what they're thinking. That's some crazy stuff. And by the way, here's one of the bricks I found. There it is. Bring it home. It's couple more laying there too. If you're under a house and you see brick pier holding up a Woods post, you got a brick Foundation, or had a brick Foundation, and they just left those behind.

Unknown: 11:02

And almost never, they'll leave them behind. John, you know, when we come in and put a new foundation and we're replacing beams and posts at the same time, sure, that would make sense, yeah. But you are right. I mean, almost, almost, you know, almost never you will see that. But we have seen that in the past. One new foundation is poured, yeah? And they left the post and Piers there, yeah, that's so much easier to do it while you're replacing the foundation. Here's

John Laforme: 11:21

something that I try to teach people, especially realtors, and I do mention this in other podcasts, just regarding people, how to set expectations if you're looking for a house in a neighborhood, How old's a house do you even ask that question. Most people are not even thinking of it, right? How old the house is, right? If you, if you approach it in a different way, like I'm saying, Okay, well, I like this neighborhood. I'm looking at these houses. First thing, how old is that house that's going to give you a guideline of what you can expect with your foundation. And when I say this to realtors, they kind of look like, wow, that's actually a good idea. So so they can better educate their buyers, right? Why waste all that time just to find out you have a brick Foundation, right? Because none of you would, would you think thinking ahead of thinking ahead to go down that road, right? So it's a really good thing to know. So how, what was the year, the era for brick foundations?

Unknown: 12:26

Okay, so, I mean, we'll see homes that are 1950s that brick foundations. Obviously, really, I haven't seen that. Yeah, the problem is this, and you're asking a very good question, but it's, but it's, I mean, you can kind of consider, like a deal breaker, everything about it like that, because they're saying, Why is the home inspector mentioning what year the house was built? A lot of times they just want you to do the inspection. You're you're being thoughtful. Yeah. So we have something called hot spots in our office, where, if you call and buying a home in this zip code, we can tell you that's a hot spot. It doesn't mean there was no work done to the house. Maybe they poured a new foundation, sure. So we don't want to break the deal by asking, you know, you know, you know what year it was built, are you familiar with the area? We'll educate them on the general aspect of things. But

John Laforme: 13:14

so that's what I mean. I mean you educate them so they have an idea that what might come about, right, right? That's what

Unknown: 13:20

I'm yeah, we call them. We call them hot spots in the office. So no South Pasadena, yeah.

John Laforme: 13:24

I'm not trying to say don't buy the house. I'm just letting you know, as you go into that, as you start searching in that house, maybe you want to put an offer in, understand that you may come across a brick Foundation. And I typically, I typically see brick foundations 1912, or older, or older. That's that

Unknown: 13:41

would be the standard, yeah. But again, you do have these builders that

John Laforme: 13:44

would have implemented it later on, Uncle Bob, or There you go. Uncle Bob. Strikes again. Strikes against Bob, Steve or mark, or whoever built actually, it's Bob. But anyway, so it's just a good rule of thumb for realtors and home buyers to think of when they're in an old neighborhood. How old is the neighborhood, right? Is it? Is it normal to have brick foundations? If it is, understand, you can't retrofit it, yep. Number one, you can't retrofit it. Two, to replace it, you could be looking at $100,000 1000 plus could be Yeah, yeah. So it's a lot of work, a lot of work and a lot of money. Yeah. So if you're not standing on your wallet. Stay away from those brick neighborhoods. Yep, unless you're getting credit. Yeah, unless you're gonna get a credit. Let's talk about river rock. I haven't seen that lately. I've only seen that maybe a couple times, and when I did, it was probably in the LA Canada area. So fill us in on that. River Rock

Unknown: 14:37

is pretty much the same as brick. Back in the day, they thought, let's use these big rocks and use this motor to hold it together. Same thing. Need to replace it. No metal, no metal ring rebar. Can't retrofit it. Can't reinforce it. That's not reinforced. And you'll see the pier is sitting on river rock, yes, so that's that's always the funniest thing to

John Laforme: 14:53

look at. Now, is river rock square? Is it round?

Unknown: 14:57

It's round. But the problem is. Problem is, when it comes down to river rock, foundation versus brick, if you try pulling it out, and this is just based on experience, you know, you'll pull out the brick and you can put it back, yeah, the river rock, you pull it out, you're not putting it back. That thing is crumbling, yeah? So, you know, definitely don't recommend doing that, unless you're, you know, foundation specials like us. But Rick, river rock and brick, same thing

John Laforme: 15:20

and, you know? And one thing too, about the river rock, I don't recall seeing ventilation under there either. Yeah, majority of them don't have it, yeah. So there's no ventilation under your house as well. So it's not a good yeah.

Unknown: 15:33

I mean, at that point, we're doing so much work under there, that's right, least of our worries, almost, yeah, yeah.

John Laforme: 15:39

So river rock is rare, rare for you. Yeah, you probably see it all day. Yeah, wow. Okay, and you guys are everywhere,

Unknown: 15:48

yeah, we service Los Angeles and pretty much all surrounding cities, alright, so tell

John Laforme: 15:52

me about your company. Now. Tell me exactly what you guys do and don't do where, where you service and, and, you know, anything else you want to

Unknown: 16:00

add, yeah? So we have, three offices. We have our main office in Woodland Hills. Our main office is in pico Robertson, and I say our main office in Long Beach. The Long Beach one is more of like a service area, location. All of our employees earn house, no subcontractors. We pretty much do everything, foundation, so beams, posts, cracks, retrofitting, replacements, crawl space, encapsulation, so on and so forth, and we provide same day reports, so the day the inspector goes out will be the day you get the inspection report from us. Yeah. So you don't have to worry about waiting three, four days for same day it's ready. And that's with a quote, with a quote, yep, retrofitting and repairs at the same time, yep. So you'll have that the same day. And you know, we're a smaller company. We're about 32 employees on the field and three or four in the office, okay, seven inspectors, not including that. So we're not the biggest company out there, but we just specialize in foundations. There's nothing wrong with specializing, Yep, yeah, we we have a right weekly presentation that I recommend all inspectors join. I participate. How was it? How was it, John? I loved it every week. Yeah, it was really good. Yeah, we have a presentation every week. We go over pretty much all things foundation. It's completely free, with beautiful breakfast that we serve. And John got food poisoning last time. But we won't talk about that. I keep breaking it up. Maybe I should stop.

John Laforme: 17:19

It wasn't us. Don't eat the burritos. He was

Unknown: 17:22

the only one that got sick. I called up everyone else, like, we're fine, yeah, but the only other one that ate was the guy next to me. No, the one guy brought it home for lunch. The the across from you. That

John Laforme: 17:33

happens, man, it might just been a bad piece of my water was maybe you had some. It was a steak. It was a steak burrito. Was it? Yeah, and I didn't eat anything out of the ordinary that I don't normally eat during that day, during my daytime. So that was that very night I was took you out. It didn't take me out that night. It took me out like a day later, right? It took a while to hit you. Oh God. But anyway, I'm alive. You're here. We got we got together. We did this today. But now I really appreciate everything. So once again, don't panic people. If you got foundation issues, they can be corrected, but they can be pricey depending on the condition. So if it's a major moisture problem where it's rotted your rebar and you get horizontal cracks, that's definitely gonna be a pricey ticket, right there. Fixing cracks is a standard thing, most homes have cracks. Yep, hairline cracks. That's what they are. They're heroin. There's no different than what's in your driveway, you know. So don't panic over these things. Just understand you don't want to ignore them. You got to deal with them. And who knows, if you're buying a house, maybe you get a really good realtor who can put some swagging on that. Yeah? Hey, how about a credit over here? Yeah, let's get this guy fixed up and we'll sign the docs. But good agents, as we call them, yeah? So you guys get a good agent, get a good inspector, who's gonna give it to you straight follow up with a specialist like YC over here. What's your real name? YC, kutiel, it's too long. Yakutia, yeah, I just

Unknown: 18:58

go easier. I can see it up to your phone contact, what

John Laforme: 19:02

did i What did I guess it has yellow cat, yellow

Unknown: 19:04

cat, yeah, I think it was yellow. What's yellow cat? Or Yellow Bird? One of those, like your yellow cat. I was like, That's me. Here's here's a burrito. You.