The DreamSlayer
So last Thursday Pocahontas and I were at our would-be new house to meet the inspector. He introduced himself with: “They call me The DreamSlayer.” (I’m not making this up.) He then proceeded to demonstrate why.
The foundation’s girders should be 4”x6“‘s and should have a 4”x4” support beam every 8’. There were 3 or 4 spans without adequate support beams, one of which went 18’ across most of the middle of the house. And instead of a 4”x6” it was a 2”x4”. And it had a big notch missing in the middle of it from a knot-hole. The DreamSlayer was chuckling about how he’d be telling stories about that one.
And most of the 4”x4” support beams weren’t of wood whose carrying capacity was rated. They were scavenged from shipping crates. Probably not actually unsafe of themselves, as there were more than necessary in most places. But not anything that meets code either.
I could go on about the wholly not-up-to-code electric system, and that the heat just plain doesn’t work, and the smaller things, but they pale in comparison to the foundation problems.
Pocahontas commented that night that it was like a break-up: sure, it’s upsetting in the moment, but we have to get right out there and keep looking. I commented that it was like a break-up in that we were eating a lot of chocolate.
So I left messages with our buyer’s agent and mortgage broker that the deal was off. And they both called back the next day talking about how we could negotiate some substantial amount to be left in the escrow account for our use in fixing the problems. So the buying price would stay the same (mostly a feature as the repair money would be coming out of our mortgage whereas after buying the house we wouldn’t have the money in pocket to do the repairs) and we could control the work.
We were pretty much over it by then, so it was like the ex showing up on your doorstep saying “We can work this out. It’ll be different this time. I can change.”
We don’t know whether or not to believe it.
If the foundation was shoddily constructed, it's a darned good bet that other parts of the house were as well. This doesn't sound like a place to which you'd want to commit yourselves for the long haul, unless you have a streak of homeowners' masochism.
My condolences on the house -- it really does sound like a breakup, because the best thing I can think of to say is "It wasn't good enough for you. Don't give up hope, the right one is out there."
Posted by Jimcat on June 24 2003 05:10
The foundation is as ephemeral as any other part, and it's an 1898 house. The brick may be original, but that used to be standard practice. Oops -- I forgot to mention that part. There's about a total of 40' of brick foundation. That doesn't fare well in earthquakes and needs to be replaced with concrete. Anyway, what you say may be true, but it's hard to draw absolute conclusions based on what the foundation is right now.
The sellers say they're shocked, shocked to learn of these problems -- they'd hired contractors whom they thought were doing things right. And they've requested a copy of our inspection report, which datum suggests they may actually be sincere: if they request the inspection, then once they have it, they're legally obligated to disclose it to any other future buyers.
Clearly the shipping crate support beams are easily explicable as owing to bozo contractors. Most of the unsupported spans aren't that long, and I'd guess that they were standard for their time if not up to modern code. And I recall the really gratuitously long unsupported span had a concrete island under it waiting for a support beam, so, again, that could be indicative of the same bozo contractors. The 2x4's been there a while, though.
So, who knows. The thing is, any house is a gamble. It's hard to tell what knowing that some specific set of problems exists or doesn't exists implies about other problems.
Posted by Zed on June 24 2003 07:25