Thought you guys might get a kick outta this.
I’m in advertising and met with a new client today at an assisted living facility. Took a walk thru and came to three empty rooms. There residents were moved out because the floor was settling at outer edges. Big cracks in drywall, floor noticeably sloped…maintenance guy had already rehung the doors once and the they were starting to stick again. Apparently two more rooms are starting to show symptoms. Building is five years old.
My contact indicated that the management company owning the facility thought that the problem could be fixed with caulk, paint and superficial stuff. They aren’t concerned but she didn’t tell them that she started moving people out. And apparently there’s no plans, at least for now, to call in an engineer.
Geez, losing hundreds of dollars a day in lost revenue, nasty looking construction failure and nobody gives a shid? Pinch me, please…
BTW, don’t ever grow old…pretty depressing and this was a relatively nice place.
Cheers,
Todd
Replies
Three modes come to mind: Ignorance, optimism or they know more than they let on.
A lot of limestone shelves and clay around here. IMHO this is an argument for crawl spaces and post foundations. The limestone forms sinkholes and the clay 'breaths', slides and creeps as conditions change. Still, at this late date and in the face of the numerous and frequent reports some don't understand this.
Of course, if your lucky, some minor settling is expected and can be self-limiting. A few minor cracks in the slabs and drywall. Within a year or two the situation stabilizes. This case doesn't seem to be one of those minor cases.
The third case is that they know, or strongly suspect, that either the foundation was poorly built or existing soil conditions were not checked for or taken into account by the foundation design. If they bring in an engineer these shortcomings may come to light. Such facilities are inspected regularly but the inspectors are not soil engineers. Empty rooms and construction could be excused as necessary renovation of changes being made to accommodate a client.
If word got out that a large portion of the building was likely to fall into a sinkhole or slide down a hill the entire facility could be shut down. Losing the use of a few rooms would be less of a burden than the closing of the entire building.
The patching could be seen as a coverup of some scale, somewhere between whistling past the graveyard or willful deception. If it is closer to the later look for the owner to try to sell. A month or two for the books to be burnished and a really big Band-Aid to be applied to the faults and then a full court press and some mighty fast skating over thin ice to get some smuck to buy the business.
Calling in an engineer would document the likely problem and remove all chances of any 'plausible deniability', many thanks to R.Reagan for that phrase. I have seen a similar situation and it wasn't 24 hours before certain checks were cashed, suitcases were filled and state lines were crossed. In the end select individuals were living quite a fine life in a foreign nation, one without extradition, and the state side situation was knee deep in lawyers, insurance. companies, bickering and accusations. In the end the building was bulldozed.
4,Interesting you suggest deception as a possible motive for inaction. I understand that there's a possible sale pending. Hard to believe that it would pass any reasonable inspection, though.Todd
As far as I know, and I worked at a hospital, the inspections were heavy on safety, cleanliness, appearances and standards of patient care but, outside of an entire wind teetering on the edge of a cliff or some other obvious structural problem putting the patients at risk, I don't think foundation issues are a big inspection item.A buyer would be wise to get everything looked at by an engineer and many banks demand some sort of inspections but it is unclear if these inspections would spot such a flaw if a large enough patch was applied and any visible disturbance explained away by a silver tongued factotum as renovation catering to a client's need.Buyer beware.
Find a contractor that does Slabjacking and look for info on http://www.concreteconstruction.net seach slabjacking, and welcome to the World of Concrete
this place needs more than simple mudjacking
sounds like they have footing movement
carpenter in transition