I recently had an inspection done on a house that I’m trying to purchase… upon inspection we noticed something that had my inspectors and a general contractor baffled. The sill bolts on the outside of one wall are showing.. there are probably 6 there and then a few more on the inside of the garage that are showing. These two areas are not near eachother. Can anyone give me an explanation for this and is it still possible that the walls are secured??
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What we have here is a failure to communicate.
slight layout error?
I respectfully ask, is this a joke?
Wow. I've seen a lot, but I guess I should know better than to say I've seen it all.
Rachel
Is this construction in an area where there would have been a framing inspection? If so, I'd expect the walls to have been fastened or it wouldn't have passed the rough.
However, the interesting question is what compelled the framer to hold the walls that far in from the edge of the foundation.
When was this thing built and by whom?
I'm guessing the foundation and the trusses had a disagreement.
One other issue
Even if the walls are secured, looks like there'd be a major problem with possible water infusion, intrusion, seepage, whatever the right term is. That ledge is going to hold water after rains. Water will seep under the sill plate & even if it is pressure treated, it will still be a potential source for major mold problems, possible wicking up into non-pressure treated wall framing, etc.
Yep, some sort of water table should have been built there.
Not a big deal if it's just the garage, but of significant concern for the main house.
And of course none of this says anything good about the care taken during construction, in general.
Someone's solution to an out-of-square foundation?
I'd like to see additional pictures.
Out of square seems to be a part of it, as the bolts get inset into the siding farther down in that shot. But the siding never gets out to the edge of the foundation, even at the far end, so it would seem that the foundation was the wrong size, and they made the mountain come to Mohammad.
I'm betting somebody turned the air in that whole neighborhood blue for a week over that one. An aircarft carrier full of sailors probably couldn't hold a candle to what was said on that jobsite.
BTW, water was my first concern as well. I am going to assume (ehmm) they found some creative (and secure) way to retro the bolts inside the wall that eventually got built and again that its up to snuff.
Better knowledge here than mine but I would want to take that final piece of siding off, put down a pressure treated lath against the wall on top of the exposed foundation (to give the back of the foundation some height to drain to the front, might have to rip a lath in half depending on diminishing width) and then z flash over this such that you have flashing down the wall then over the lath (on the horizontal) and then down the face of the foundation. I would probably tapcon the heck out of it on the face of the foundation. Oh, this would be after cutting the original bolts flush with the top of the foundation.
My main goal would be the get a metal flashing over that exposed foundation that is angled enough to drain down over the face of the foundation.
A second thought is that you could also put up a lean too (sp?) shed the length of the back of the garage to cover the exposed foundation....but that would have to be square to the wall and not the foundation or else your lean too will be narrower at one end than the other. Could be just tall enough / wide enough to store trash cans, mowers bikes etc. 4' tall x 3'wide.
(Besides, you can never have enough sheds!)