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In our previous interview with the company, they explained the likely reason behind the crumbling houses. Apart from poor decisions during the building process, they also pinned some blame on the city’s land quality.
“They were often built with shallow footings that are prone to sink over time. Additionally, there is a lot of expansive soil in Los Angeles, which, due to its high clay content, expands and contracts. This leads to corners or sides of a home that sink."
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We also spoke with Alpha Structural representative Ben Reinhart, who detailed one of the worst homes they inspected in 1992. It was a three-story hillside home in the Playa del Rey neighborhood.
“The condition of the soil supporting the home was so bad that during our assessment, we found that the home was cracking and actually moving,” he revealed.
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Reinhart says it was the first time they had evacuated a home’s inhabitants due to the extent of structural damage. The following day, they immediately put temporary shoring in place to prevent a total collapse.
“The complexity of the repair required, getting a large rig on a steep hillside to excavate a 55’ deepened foundation, made this one of the worst and most challenging in our long history. Let’s just say if we were on a reality TV show, this episode would’ve been a season finale,” he explained.
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According to Sydney-based property inspector Fadi Keyrouz, not all cracks on a house’s walls are cause for concern. In an article published on LinkedIn, he identified three types of ruptures that could indicate structural failure.
“Interior wall cracks which occur in plasterboard or gyprock, exterior wall cracks such as cracks in the surface, brickwork, or in the rendering of external walls, and cracks in foundation walls.”
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Keyrouz advises paying attention to the shapes of cracks, as well. Each one may suggest different problems.
“Stepped cracks tend to follow the lines of horizontal and vertical joints in buildings, such as beds of mortar between bricks or blocks, and may indicate structural movement.”
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“Vertical cracks may indicate that structural components such as bricks or blocks have failed, and so can be a sign of significant stresses within the building structure,” he wrote.
“Cracks that are wider at the top or at the bottom may indicate that there has been foundation movement, with the direction of the widening giving an indication of the likely direction of the movement.”
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