Latest / WCHS Network Podcasts / 04/24/2024 Ask the Expert with Foster Construction

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04/24/2024 Ask the Expert with Foster Construction · WCHS Network Podcasts

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Unlock your dream property with meex Realty Group, where Rich the realtor makes real
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estate dreams a reality, whether it's residential or commercial. We've got Charleston to
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Huntington covered. Your key to exceptional real estate experience is start here. Meeks
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Realty Group. Contact us at Meeks dot us. The views and opinions expressed
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on this program do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of five ADWCHS,
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it's employees or WVRC Media. Good morning, It's a twenty two on five
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ADWCHS, the Voice of Charleston. I'm Jeff Jenkins with you this morning,
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and Foster Construction. Brett Hodgden is with us today and back after being here
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last month with Coop and so welcome this morning. Our lines are open three
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oh four three four five fifty eight fifty eight. Three oh four three four
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five fifty eight fifty eight. We're going to talk about foundations and how important
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found dations are. That's that's the specialty. Foster Construction. Good morning,
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How you doing. I'm doing wonderful. It's good to see you. Good,
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good to see you again. You and I hooked up in a previous
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previous time. Yeah, many many years ago when I was just doing home
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inspections I was doing, asked the expert at that time as well, and
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yeah, yeah, Coop was out one time then too, Yeah he was.
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Yes, so Coop's out today, so I'm filling them for him.
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We're welcome, good to see again. And I know you did a little
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bit of this little of this bit of this last note, Rat, but
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it just kind of to familiarize our listeners with what you do. So let's
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start there and then we'll get into some more specifics. Yeah, so we
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are kind of as we specialize very much so in residential foundation repair. We
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do do some commercial, but more so the demand is more so in the
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residential field. But we we do anything that relates to the foundation, floor
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systems, cross spaces, basements, stabilizing fund undations, waterproof and foundations.
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We tend to take on the kind of the more tricky, larger projects a
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lot of times in the area that some of the other contractors aren't aren't really
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interested in big digouts, waterproof jobs. Sometimes we we've got one one under
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contract that we have to replace a approximately a thirty foot section of a foundation
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wall that was hit by a car from this winter, we when we had
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one of those bad, bad ice storms. So we get we get into
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a little bit of everything as it relates to structural rehabilitation of a house.
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What's the what is the biggest enemy to a foundation? Is it water?
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Yeah? Too much or too little? You know this this time of year.
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It I mean, we had a little bit of rain today. But
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I was walking the dog the other day and I actually noticed always look at
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the curb the soil where it comes up against the curb on the on the
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road, and we're starting to get uh, it was starting to separate.
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And that's the result of the soil drying out and shrinking. And that was
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of course in my neighborhood. But yes, so too much water can lead
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to excess pressure on a basement foundation wall can lead to the soil swelling causing
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heave, which is not as common of an issue, but we do see
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it and then and then durned droughts when it when it dries out, we
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tend to get settlement as a result of the soil drying out shrinking. We
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have fairly expansive soils in this region. Areas are worse than others, but
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for the most part, we have pretty expansive soil, so as it dries
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out at shrinks and that allows the houses to drop or can allow the house
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to drop. I'm amazed at how in this area. Of course, you
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know, there is some flat land in the valley and some places in Charleston,
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but most of us live there's some kind of slant on our property,
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right and it's amazing seeing how some houses have been built, you know,
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on the side of the hill and the I mean you'll see foundation walls that
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are I don't know, twenty feet high in some areas. Yeah, there
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are some impressive, impressively tall foundations, and that just that makes you know,
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if they start to move, that makes them quite a bit more challenging
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and unfortunately more expensive to repair. But those are those are the things that
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that's why there's such a demand in this region is the height of the height
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of the foundations, the terrain that we have, but also the techniques that
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we're ustilized to construct many of the houses in the fifties, sixties and seventies
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in this area, we have a lot of unreinforced CMU or concrete masonry unit
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construction, so we have no concrete or rebar in the foundations and many of
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them, and that tends to increase the risk for the movement. Okay,
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so let's start and again as bred Hodgton is with this with Foster construction,
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and the numbers are called three or four, three four, five, fifty
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eight fifty. If you've got a question about your foundation three o four three
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four five fifty eight fifty eight. What what should a home rwner do just
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maybe every year every six months? Is there some I mean, should you
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kind of just go around and look around your house? Yeah? Yes,
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Maintenance is the number one. So back to water. Keeping your gutters and
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down spouts clean functional, making sure those are diverting water away from your foundation
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is is step number one. Gutter guards are a great investment, don't We
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don't install gutter guards, but they are a great investment. I would I
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put them on all the houses I've owned. I have put them on there
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where needed. The house I live in now that I don't need them on
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one side, so I didn't spend the effort. But water is is is
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critical. Location where down spouts discharge is very important. I've always recommended a
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minimum of five feet away, but that's of course depends on the location and
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whether the ground is sloped away from the buildings of the water actually flows away.
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I'm the goofball out in the in the rainstorm with an umbrella, checking
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the sea if my cutters are overflowing. That's that's something that I would encourage
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people to do during a moderate rainstorm, you know, even looking out the
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windows to see if water's dumping off the roof, because that is that is
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what's what's causing most problems that someone will have. I've had. I've had
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there's one particular gutter at my house that that one time, it was just
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it was a baseball or tennis ball that was stuck. Yeah, and I
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saw this wash saw from the living room this water just like cascading off my
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house and I was going, what And of course you're right, it goes
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right down to the foundation, I mean that's where it goes. And it
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was pouring the rain. So I went out there in the rain, got
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the ladder, you know, reached my hand down and pulled the ball out,
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and gutter systems started working amazingly. Yeah. Yeah, back, that's
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interested the tennis ball. I've seen that quite a bit from back in my
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home inspection days. You'd see toys, a little army man up there.
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Nerve bullets are always in the gutters. Gutters. Uh but yeah, simple
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things like that. One little plug like that can can create a larger issue
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because you let that go long term. Yeah, yeah, you can.
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I mean, guy can lead to water injury and mold growth. Again.
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You know, any of the number of foundation movement issues that we see is
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almost more often than not is caused by a water related issue. In fact,
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when I'm when I'm doing my evaluation of a foundation, I typically am
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you know, I always want to have a reason why this has occurred.
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I want to identify the cause. I mean, if it's just poor construction,
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that's one thing. But almost every time, there's some sort of water
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related issue, and I want to identify that so I can educate the homeowner
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as to here's what's happened, and here's what we need to do to fix
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it. Here's what we need to do to manage either to fix it,
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manage it. So basically I can come up with an accurate plan and have
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the confidence that it's gonna to address it. I also want to address that
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water related issue. There are some homes in our region that are close together,
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you know, are close together and in some places, and I don't
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know if this is a good idea or not because the house has may have
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been built in the forties or the fifties, and instead of grass in between
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the houses, there's cement concrete. You know, it's poured as walkways down
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I don't you know, those get cracks in them, those type of things.
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Is it better to have soil or conquered just depends, I mean and
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impervious. I don't want to call it him. But a solid surface like
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a driveway, as long as it's pitched correctly, will definitely divert water efficiently
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away from the foundation. So you know, I think that's perfectly fine.
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It's just the other issue with a driveway up against the houses. Now you've
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got vehicle weight and vibrations from the vehicle, so there's a lot of factors
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to it. But I wouldn't say one's better than other, as long as
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as the water is being conveyed away from the rooundation adequately. Right, Okay,
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Now with Foster construction game Brett hodged Hodgeden, I'm going to get that
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right, got it? Okay? Is with us here and the numbers three
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or four, three, four, five, fifty to fifty. Do you
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get calls mostly when there's a problem or somebody is it more? Hey,
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I want you, I want to take what will you do? Will you
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cut? Also you're coming when there's a problem, but you're how early would
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you cut me? So I would just say, I don't know. I
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mean, you'll just come check it out, right? Yeah? Yeah,
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So, well, anytime somebody has an issue, a lot of ours has
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driven the real estate community. The purchase and sale of the home drives a
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lot of the industry. Because the home inspector goes out, they noticed something,
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they recommended it an engineer or a foundation repair contractor my preferences. They
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would recommend an engineer because a lot I mean there's just a different level of
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experience and independence of an engineer than than just recommending a contractor. They don't
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have any skin in the game whether a repair gets done or not. But
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they would call us, we'd come out take a look out, and with
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our company with Foster Construction, I'm going to it's it's me myself that's going
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to be going out there to to to evaluate it and and come up with
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again find the source of the problem, UH and then come up with different
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options that that can possibly fix the issue. Sometimes there's only one option.
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A good example of a house yesterday that had some water in a cross space,
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there was there's really only one option to fix that one. But what
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what what is that? So that in that case, the the only real
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option was to excavate the soil on the outside and water and solid waterproofing and
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drainage system. Sometime, many more often than not, we have another option
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to do it from the inside. But the way this particular house was built,
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they the over ex excavated the crawl space and they formed their footers on
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the inside, so essentially I could see the bottom of the footer. And
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normally what we can do inside of crawl space is collect the water inside and
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manage it inside. But that has to be done with a piping system that
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is dug out. You have to dig out a trench. So by digging
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out that trench you would then undermine the footer, risking foundation movement. So
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in this particular case, we really only had the one option. But you
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know, most cases, I'm going to give the homeowner the different options.
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I'll estimate them both ways, so they can make the decision which direction they
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want to go, because there's always you know, the outside excavation is typically
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a little more expensive than the interior option. There's more, it's more labor
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intensive, there's more soil that has to be removed from the property and gravel
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drainage brought back in. So I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna evaluate
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and give them the different options and let them make the decision based on their
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their budget restraints which direction they do. I'm thinking also about just regular maintenance
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things like you know, you so you mentioned water. Well, say you've
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got a driveway it butts up against a attached garage, you know, and
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there are cracks there. Say there's a crawl space underneath there. You had
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celand on there, but the ceilint got old, right they camp the water.
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So those are things I'm assuming that you need to yes, keep check
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oning. Yes, So a cross space blow of garage can be or even
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a basement blow a garage floor can can pose. And we do a lot
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of this because there are a lot of these in the area. But you'll
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typically have what is called a suspended concrete floor slab that is supported by steel
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joists and you get the little hairline cracks, water works its way through the
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crack and starts causing corrosion on the beams. This is especially a concern during
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the winter months when salt is carried in on vehicles, which speeds up that
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corrosive proper process, but you end up getting crosion. Oftentimes when metal crodes,
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that will expand, which is called rust jacking, which and then further
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furthers the cracking opens it up further. So, yeah, there's ceialing those
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cracks is a very important order. We're actually on a job right now today
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where we're actually doing that exact same process. We've painted the beams, scraped
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and painted the beams the last couple of days, and now we're we've ground
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grinding out cracks and you can do that in the garage. You'll do those
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type of things, yep. And so today we're actually we ground it and
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ground out the cracks yesterday and we're gonna do anpoxy sealing on those cracks so
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the water no longer seeps through and causes that corosion. Yeah. Quite Actually
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that's a tough that's a tough like do you know, do do yourself job?
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That's a tough job to do because are so many cracks. Sometimes it's
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hard. I mean, you know, it's difficult to be able to identify
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them and then how do you do it. You've got the machinery to grind
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them out. Yeah, and it's it's time consuming. I mean, we
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had pretty much two guys working on that, you know, between the driveway
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and the garage floor. The two guys pretty much bepent all day grinding the
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cracks out yesterday and then we'll spend another half day to day sealing them up.
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So it is a time consuming process to do it and do it right.
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You know, I'm notorious for doing projects around my house that extend out
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over long periods of time because it's just you know, weekend warriors just don't
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have the time to get it done right. But yeah, and the I
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am thinking of that because there are you see a lot of those garages and
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you see and you see windows underneath underneath, so you know there's a something,
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there's something underneath there, So that can be that can be an issue
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because you know, don't want that to fail, no, no, no,
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and it's got to get it extreme before it fails. And because the
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slabs pretty thick, right, probably, Well, normally that's three four inches
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thick the slab, and your steel's really the main, the steel joice or
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the main you know, they space those pretty tightly, sixteen to twenty four
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inches that way, there's the there's not that much spa, but the concrete
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doesn't have to span very far between the supports, so the steal is the
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primary supporting condition. But I mean, it's pretty rare to see one fail.
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I have seen in crawl spaces that were concealed, no no access,
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where no even knew there was a crawl space, where eventually a crawl space
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gets or a hatch gets installed, where the joys have literally just dissolved in
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their laying on the ground and somehow the slab's still up there. But it's
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that's spooky, Yeah, to think that it was a car on that thing.
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Yeah, yeah, Well, well great grant information three O four three
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four five fifty eight fifty eight three oh four three four five fifty eight fifty
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eight. Brett Hodgton is with us here on five any w CCHS Foster Construction.
15:41
Our lines are open. We're going to take our one and only break
15:43
and be back to talk more about foundations in a moment on five eighty WCHS
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the Voice of West Virginia. Boom boom. This is five ADWCA just the
16:59
Voice of Trial eight thirty nine. Jeff Jenkins with you today on as the
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expert, and Brett is with us Brett Hodgygen with Foster Construction, and they
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mainly focus on foundation repair, inspection, repair, correction, instruction to the
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homeowner, but you do some other things. It's kind of kind of associated,
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right yep. Yeah, we we do a little bit of kind of
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a little bit of everything. We don't do any any real finished work or
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citing anything like that, but we will. We build decks, we build
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retaining walls. We do the foundation underpinning, which basically holds a house up
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if it's settling. We stabilize boeing or leaning walls, waterproofing, cross space
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work like in cross space encapsulations, floor system repair. I mean, there's
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a lot that we were capable of. And there's anything that really has to
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do with a structural component of home, of a home or around a home
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that we we will that we can get into. In the neighborhood where I
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live, I'm you know, I walk the dogs a lot and jog or
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whatever, and I'm amazed at the at the retaining wall work like the I
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guess it's mostly sandstone probably yea. And whoever had whoever had that job up
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in my neighborhood, which is the Montrose neighborhood of South Charleston. I mean,
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they did wonderful work. But you see a lot of those walls now,
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I mean, because these walls were probably fifties sixties, you see them.
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A lot of them are bowing, right, I mean they're it and
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it's amazing how many of them are still standing and standing and look and look
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great. Yeah it is they They really were well done. And yeah,
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those those can those those did fairly well because they're pretty heavy. They're a
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mass wall. How do you maintenance that? Tuck pointing, I mean mainly
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it's again water, try to keep the water out from accumulating behind it.
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A lot of those walls will have weeps. They just left it essentially left
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a mortar joint out where water will seep through the wall. But a stone
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mason, I mean, don't we don't do a lot of maintenance on that.
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But somebody that that focuses on stone means stone down off of Greenbriar Streets
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typically, who I'm if it's a stone wall who I'm going to refer people
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too, because I think they put a lot from in over the years.
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Right now, what will you do? You mentioned you do decks again with
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elevator on the side of a hillside. A lot of people have decks on
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their back porch or their side, and a lot of those are really suspemic.
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They're high. Yes, yeah, so how do you look take a
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look at those. So decks are very interesting. Very few decks in this
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area are constructed properly, very few. Rarely have I ever seen installed what
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are called ladder load connectors, which is basically an anchor, a way to
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anchor the deck to the house. So it doesn't the most common It basically
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prevents the lateral movement of a deck. But the most common way a deck
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fails is the floor system moves away from the house and the house side of
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the deck drops, and that's the most common way a deck will fail.
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So there's decks built, many that aren't connected to the house. Well,
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not with that lateral load connector, okay, but yes, there's there's a
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lot that have very poor attachments either just nails, Some are lag bolted,
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some are just anchored into the brick. Veneer which is that's very common.
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I mean, that's a very common method. It's very difficult to build a
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deck, build a deck properly. I don't want to say it's difficult,
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but it's it's much easier to build it incorrectly when there's brick veneer, right,
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And that's just to attach it to the brick. A deck can be
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built free standing to where it doesn't rely on the house. Uh in the
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event that it has brick veneer. Uh. And there's also another attachment method
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manufactured by Simpsons Strong Tide that has a code approved attack that actually attaches directly
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through It goes through the brick of an internet attaches into the actual structure of
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the home. But yeah, the decks, the decks are There are some
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pretty spooky decks out there in the Charleston area. I mean thirty feet forty
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feet off the crowd. Yeah, two story structures that just some guy built.
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And whether he knew, you know, understood why he was building doing
21:22
certain things or not is probably not the case. But but yeahs decks are
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something I enjoy building decks. I enjoyed the framing, working with with lumber
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like that. Now, can you come sure up a deck. Sure,
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yeah, I actually looked at a deck. A gentleman had a pretty substantial
21:41
slip out behind his house yesterday that he had us look out look at.
21:45
And for this actual slip, I referred him to another engineer that specializes as
21:51
a geotechnical engineering or soils engineering. But you know, this slip actually went
21:56
all the way up right up underneath the corner of his home home, so
22:00
and and there was a deck underneath it. So we're going to temporarily short
22:04
his deck so as this slip continues until it can get corrected, it doesn't
22:08
pull off and either damage the house or actually pull off and fall. But
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yeah, yeah, we'll come out and just that's I mean, that is
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a pretty common common issue that you basically dig a small hole, stick a
22:22
six by six post in it, and pour some concrete around it, and
22:25
that's your footer. That's a pretty common thing. And what we can do
22:29
with those is temporarily support the deck and just cut the post off, remove
22:33
the footer, and then actually pour a new footer underneath it right up to
22:37
the deck. That's a pretty common thing we do. We've got one of
22:41
those coming up in South Charleston on the on the river bank shortly. Yeah,
22:45
okay, all right, yeah, and that's a that's uh. And
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you mentioned you like you like building decks too, right, Yeah, I
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enjoy the product. I don't I don't get to I don't get out in
22:55
the field much anymore. But I've enjoyed when when we've had a deck project,
23:00
I enjoy the I enjoy those. I enjoy them partially because we build
23:03
them correctly, and I enjoyed seeing things done the right way because like from
23:10
the I mean the home inspection. I had a realtor that harped on me
23:12
about my home inspections about how I was so hard on decks, and that's
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one of the most likely places outside of being on a ladder, a deck
23:21
is one of the most likely places somebody can get injured at home, just
23:25
because they are very poorly constructed. Now, well you have is there some
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I'm sure there are examples of you have a deck, the decks so could
23:33
with the stairs are bad like you're coming off stairs. Oh yeah, yeah,
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the decks, the steps for attachment, it's all about connections for decks.
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I mean they're outside, exposed of the weather, and you get some
23:44
weathering on on a connection, and it causes either the nailed or rust or
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the shrinking and swelling of the wood as it gets wet and dry over time
23:52
can can weaken a connection. So proper metal to wood connections are critical.
24:00
Using good quality hardware is very important. One building a deck. Sometimes decks
24:06
are connected to patios. So you how much of that do you? Yeah?
24:11
I mean every situation, i'd say is a little bit different. I
24:15
mean they can be anchored. There are concrete anchors that can be anchored back
24:18
into the concrete or even epoxies that can you can set, uh, set
24:25
an anchor with an epoxy celant that bonds into that concrete. Yeah, three
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or four three four five fifty fifty eight. Three or four three four five
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fifty eight fifty eight. Foster Construction is here with Brett Hodgden, and he
24:38
and his wife were all in. Yeah, yeah, right, you were
24:41
all in. Yeah. She she had a full time job here in Charleston
24:47
and working for an oil and gas company and they sold all their West Virginia
24:51
assets. They kept her around for a while, but eventually they let everybody
24:56
from Charleston go. And about that time we decided to buy Foster Construction from
25:02
from Dave Foster, who's had the business for many years and was very well
25:06
respected in the industry when I was before I bought it. He was one
25:10
of the few that I would refer my business to any of my engineering work
25:14
to to do the foundation repairs. He was one of the few that I
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would I tried to kind of push him to to Dave, because I mean,
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there's a lot of there's there was a lot of time required of me
25:27
on other job sites to make sure things didn't get covered up, whereas Dave
25:32
always did a great job. Yeah. And and I've already heard you say
25:34
like two or three times in this conversation. I think that's a good quality
25:37
of a of a business owner. Is you know you who you refer?
25:44
I mean, that's serious, that's serious for you. I mean you,
25:47
I mean you know you can't do everything you refer. You refer customers,
25:51
you know, to people who can't Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I
25:52
know my limitations. Yeah, I know my limitations. I know what we're
25:57
good at, I know what we've struggled at in the past, and if
26:02
we're not good at it, we're not going to do it. It's not
26:03
good for me, it's not good for the homeowner, not good for my
26:07
crew. They don't like doing stuff they're not good at either. Yeah,
26:11
and we were pretty strict on our quality control. I try to get to
26:15
every job at least every other day to make sure things are going right.
26:19
But the guys take photos, We talk every day, so the quality we're
26:25
very We don't go back and fix things very often. We've had to.
26:30
Obviously, everybody's got to go back here and there and touch things back up,
26:33
but it's very rare we have to go back, and in fact,
26:37
that's a lot of what we do is actually fixing things that have already been
26:41
fixed once by somebody else, whether it was forty years ago when we didn't
26:45
have the best methods for repair, or even two years ago when it's just
26:52
a salesman went out and sold a gimmick product off the back of their truck
26:56
to you know, like a spring loaded ibeam. That these guys are out
26:59
there trying to sell people that that they claim we're going to push your foundation
27:03
wall back, and some of the stuff that's out there is remarkable, is
27:07
it? When when you talk about founding found it may be very rare.
27:14
I guess where you say that can't be can most of them? Most of
27:18
the problems be corrected. Yeah, I mean sometimes it takes rebuilding. Yeah,
27:22
there's so actually taking taking the foundation wall out, jacking up a house
27:26
and build rebuilding a foundation wall. Yeah yeah, just built, building a
27:32
temporary wood frame wall to hold the house up, knocking the block out going
27:36
right off the foot or back up to the house. Yeah. Yeah.
27:38
We've got we've got one under contract. Uh that car that hit that that
27:44
we're going to do and that that one we could probably say, but the
27:48
engineer and the insurance company came to terms and that's the direction everybody wanted to
27:52
go. So that's the direction we're going. There's a house in Cross Lanes.
27:56
I had a conversation with a gentleman about that. We looked at a
28:00
year or two ago, and it's a thirty five forty foot wall that there's
28:03
nothing to be done with it, but replaced it there. Last time I
28:07
was there, there was a football sized chunk of the foundation that had broken
28:11
out and was laying on the ground, and there's just nothing we can do
28:15
with that. Once it gets to that state, right right, three or
28:18
four three four five, fifty fifty eight three or four three four five fifty
28:22
eight fifty eight. Brett Hotchton is with us here with Foster Construction on five
28:26
EDW CCHS and just I don't want to I don't want to squeeze this right
28:30
at the end. But the best way to get a hold of you,
28:33
guys, uh called the office three or four seven seven, six six two
28:37
sixty three. Email. You can get on our website and there's a one
28:41
of those little bidgets like every website has that goes directly to Amber, my
28:45
wife, and she'll she'll respond to you. But scheduling is your best option
28:49
is to get me out there is to talk with Amber. She she sets
28:52
my schedule. I remember you seeing that last time. Oh if I touched
28:56
MyTime, I mess it up right over low myself. I have a problem
29:00
of not being able to say no. Yeah, but yeah, she takes
29:03
care of all the schedule for us. Yeah, that's great in Foster Construction
29:10
is really good. Top of my name to remember, I mean, that's
29:12
it's pretty simple to remember. Yeah, yeah, well hopefully yeah, yeah
29:17
it is. And h three or four three four five fifty fifty All right,
29:21
So talking about water, we've talked about water. French drains still,
29:26
Yeah, it's still really a great option. Absolutely, we're in fact,
29:30
we're not a different project. We're doing we we just installed a fifty foot
29:33
long French drain across the front of the house and we're doing a twenty thirty
29:37
one down the side of the house. And French drains are they're not hard,
29:45
but they're done improperly all the time. The most important thing is you've
29:51
got to have a good drainage field and you've got to keep the soil fine
29:55
soil particles out of the pipe and out of the drainage field. And that's
29:59
done with soil soil separation fabric, geotechnical fabric. And what we do is
30:03
we will typically dig anywhere from a foot to two foot deep and about a
30:08
foot or two foot wide trench that not only is is the trench well,
30:15
we'll dig in a manner where the trench has a pitch eight inch every foot
30:19
or a quarter inch every foot, depending on site conditions what allows. And
30:23
we dig our trench with a with a with a slope, We put our
30:27
fabric in, we put our pipe in and then back filled with gravel.
30:30
So not only do we have a pipe that is pitched to a four inch
30:33
diameter open hole that is pitched in that in that trench, we also have
30:37
a trench. So it's it's it's almost a fail safe way that no matter
30:41
what's happening, the water is moving in the direction we want it. But
30:47
a lot of a lot of homeowners I see a lot of homeowner installed French
30:51
drains and they just don't have a very long life expectancy. They don't get
30:55
the fabric in there like possible, and so the dirt gets in the drain.
30:57
Yeah, and a lot of times they're they're they're very shallow, and
31:00
they tend to end up floating through freestall cycles. They end up coming up
31:06
and being exposed above grade, and at that point they just don't function.
31:10
So from what I heard, you say, you don't have to or do
31:11
you have to go down to the bottom of the foundation. Well, so
31:15
that for a new foundation drain, yes, you go adjacent to the foot
31:18
with a perforated pipe French drain. So a lot of times people call a
31:22
French drain and a foundation during the same thing, I call a foot or
31:26
drain or a foundation drain, the drain adjacent to your foot French drain I
31:30
think of as like a yard drain out in the middle of your yard,
31:33
catching water in a wet area or whatever it might be, or as a
31:37
primary diversion of water away from the house. And you mentioned the drain fields
31:41
important, I mean, you don't want to drain it. Yeah, yeah,
31:45
So we backfill the We'll either backfill the entire trend, depending on what
31:49
the home owner wants. We'll either backfill the entire trench with gravel up to
31:52
grade level and it kind of turned it into a walkway. They could even
31:56
put pavers on it and it looks like a little gravel walkway, or we'll
32:00
backfill it up to about a foot below, if you know, if we've
32:04
got a two foot trench, we'll backfill the bottom one foot with gravel and
32:07
then the top one foot with native soil and replant grass. It does they
32:14
do tend to dry out a little bit in the summer months above the French
32:17
train. Sometimes you can see the because they're well draining and the water doesn't
32:22
hold in that soil as well. But uh, it's just personal preference at
32:27
that point, right, right, Okay, Uh, And so again that's
32:31
trying to get the water right and now I was thinking, here, you
32:34
know, what should you mentioned? You may go around look at your foundation.
32:38
I mean, if you got a problem a crack obviously, right,
32:42
I mean, I mean, well, we'll foundations just kind of naturally crack
32:46
or not. Or I mean most houses have cracks, right, what's the
32:51
crack we should be concerned about? Sometimes it's the small one at the corner
32:55
of the foundation that doesn't really look like much. Okay, all right,
32:58
all right, So there's I mean, there's there's cracks developed from a conversation
33:04
we had earlier about from rust jacking. Lentils steel basically as a steel beam
33:08
that goes above a door or a window and it holds brick or stone,
33:14
and if those start to rust, they will expand and swell and cause in
33:19
some cases pretty nasty looking cracks coming off the propagating them diagonally up and away
33:23
from that window or door, and they look really really rough, and to
33:29
the untrained eye that might look like settlement. And I had a church I
33:32
looked at a couple of weeks ago where another contractor wanted to spend forty thousand
33:37
dollars doing push piers on this church. And the problem was not settlement.
33:43
It was the rust jacking and and so fortunately it was out there and they
33:47
didn't spend that money because it would have been it would have been a waste
33:52
of money, right, and all they needed to do, I mean outside
33:55
of I mean, the cracks are pretty rough and it's a really old building,
33:59
but they just need the windows above. The lower windows had gaps between
34:04
the sill and the window and replacement windows, and that's where the water entry
34:07
was occurring. So they needed a handyman to paint, you know, seal
34:10
their window to keep it from getting worse. And then they needed a mason
34:15
to tuck point the brick and scrape and paint their steels. Okay, so
34:19
what I'm hearing from Brad here Hodgton is he's he owns Faltering, his wife
34:24
owned Foster Construction. Before that, he did a lot of home inspections.
34:30
I see the two coming together here too. I mean, you got right,
34:34
I mean you're still kind of in that home inspection moding. I'm sure
34:37
that helps in with the construction business. It does, And again that goes
34:39
back to I have to identify for myself to feel comfortable with what I'm recommending.
34:45
I have to know what caused the problem, so I can either fix
34:49
the problem or change the situation to where that problem no longer is contributing to
34:54
the situation. But yet, yes, that that I definitely cut my teeth
35:00
in the home inspection industry. I did that for around fifteen years. I
35:04
did five thousand some home inspections, well quite a few structural inspections over that
35:08
time period. So yeah, that's definitely where I mean, it's it's looking
35:13
at the house as a whole. It's it's a living, breathing thing that
35:16
you have to you have to look at it from all aspects to to really
35:21
know. So five thousand inspections I'm gonna make it's probably the wrong assumption.
35:29
Probably seemed just about everything. But then sometimes you'll say, oh, I've
35:32
never seen that before. They're still surprising that. Okay, we've got creative
35:37
contractors and builders in the area over the many years. But yeah, yeah,
35:43
it's it definitely helped. I mean, there's a lot of things you
35:46
just have to stand at, you know, stand in front of something for
35:50
fifteen minutes and take it in and until you understand why why that was done
35:54
or what what what caused that situation and that's you know, that's just something
35:59
I've had to do over the years, right, Okay, So give me
36:02
forty seconds here because we're getting ready to wrap it up. Just if people
36:07
give you guys a call, you know they want to come out. I
36:10
mean, we're you gonna what's gonna happen. So you're gonna call the office
36:15
and she's gonna set up an appointment. I'm gonna come out and do an
36:17
evaluation. Essentially, I'm gonna ask you, you know, what's your problem?
36:21
What do you want want me to look at? And you know,
36:22
uh, So I'm gonna go through the process, take all my measurements,
36:29
go through everything with you, the problems, the possible options. We're going
36:32
to come to a path forward whatever whatever you may want to uh, whatever
36:38
direction you want to go, And then I'm gonna come up with an estimate
36:40
as well as a kind of a preliminary drawing so that it's got some understanding
36:45
of what the estimate includes. Uh. And from there, I'm gonna pride
36:49
you with that estimate and that drawing and and then you decide whether you want
36:52
to go with us or somebody else. Okay, all right, And he's
36:55
a trustworthy guy, I can tell just see you and he's got a good
36:58
smile too. So good, good to see you again, Yes, good
37:01
to see okay, so Foster Construction website and then the number yep, Foster
37:06
Construction WV dot com, Foster Construction w V dot com, and and Foster
37:12
Construct Foster Foundation Repair dot com as well. Leave the same place, and
37:15
then phone number three oh four seven seven six six two six five E E
37:21
w C H S A nine six point five F M. Charleston at one
37:23
oh four point five Cross Lanes, w v RC Media Station. We are
37:29
proud to live here too,