Sink Ho.
One of the best and worst part of what I do is that you can do it anywhere. Where buildings are; you can talk construction…. as long as you’re not in the bfe woods….you will have buildings. I recently took … Continue reading →
One of the best and worst part of what I do is that you can do it anywhere. Where buildings are; you can talk construction…. as long as you’re not in the bfe woods….you will have buildings. I recently took my kids to Disney Orlando visiting my Mom in an Orlando suburb as home base. The killing birds with rocks thing cliche’. We also went to SeaWorld, Sanford Zoo Adventure Park, and Daytona Beach.
Will,Viv, and Dad @SeaWorld.
Rave reviews all around.
The most common soil conditions to build on in our area is undisturbed. This indicates farmland or other land that has never been deep excavated and has good natural supportive conditions to build on. Often in Florida and in other coastal regions where the natural soil conditions are sandy/swampy or otherwise unsupportive, homes must be built on engineered fill. This involves bringing in soil and other materials that must be compacted to a support a specified load. This is the case with my Mom’s house which she purchased last year as new construction in a young subdivision in an Orlando suburb and is very common in the area. Other features standard for the area and uncommon to our area include 2 stage footing/slab foundation construction with 1st level hollow concrete block walls that are core filled with concrete and structural steel as they are built. This is how the walls develop strength against wind loading. Hollow concrete block foundations are the most popular type of foundation in Nashville and are almost always not core filled.
Concrete and steel core filled 1st level foundation; wood framed 2nd level.
Terra cotta roof with weeps.
I note here that none of these homes had gutters which makes me weak in the knees but was explained to me to be acceptable by my step Dad Ed due to the good drainage from the sandy soils. My vote would be for gutters anyway as has been Ed’s in the past with gutters on all of his previous FL homes. My Mom has been mostly happy with the home and is ecstatic about being reunited with populated civilization. Not so with one her neighbors and a few other incomplete homes in the subdivision.
A neighbor in a home at the opposite end of the subdivision (end nearer to the swamp area) experienced cracking and other evidence of movement within their home and at the exterior.
Small cracks more poignant in a core filled foundation. We see small cracks all the time in hollow block foundations.
Not a good sign.
Sink holes are not limited to coastal regions with sandy soils. I can remember years ago a home in the Franklin area that exhibited crazy movement and turned out to have been built over a pit where organic tree matter was buried years prior when the area was cleared for strip mining activities. The home is fine for the first 20 years; then becomes unstable when the organic matter begins to decay. In this FL case though, a home inspection would not have helped. The detection of the presence of sink holes during property inspections is outside the scope.
In respect to home inspection, you should always have a new construction home inspected by a 3rd party private home inspector prior to purchase. I will post in the future some of the litany of new construction defects I have run across in my 10 years of home inspection in the greater Nashville/Brentwood/Franklin area.
Seeing Knowing Caring Inspector Bill Carlson
