One of the problems that turned up in my recent home inspection was that, when the inspector went through the crawlspace, he found that some wooden columns are bearing directly on the ground. He listed this as a “major repair needed.”
What’s it supposed to do instead? All I can think of is maybe bearing onto a cement block on the ground? But I really have no idea.
This sounds expensive though. It’s expensive, isn’t it.
Wooden columns directly on the ground will rot. Quickly.
Putting them on concrete blocks with a metal or plastic barrier between the concrete and the wood will alleviate that problem.
However, this is only a solution if you are in a location where the ground will never freeze, and probably a code violation even in those areas. In most of the United States, frost can heave your columns up as much as six inches (or more!), causing structural damage to anything resting on them. You have to install a concrete footing well below frost line, and, yes, it can get expensive.
Dang. 
I don’t know for your case, but for my deck they had to put concrete supports in.
I don’t know how expensive it will be. I had a problem that resulted in part of the ledger board being replaced and two trusses (?) repaired, the contractor put in some temp supports and did the work. It was less than a thousand. (At the point this happened, I was having the deck replaced and had to have a window over the deck fixed, plus the ledger board, plus the trusses; my bill for the whole thing only increased by about $1200 over the deck cost.)
Edit: Now I see Brother Cadfael’s comment (I took a long time to post), so I guess my experience can’t compare to the OPs question.
What area is the house in? In a cold climate, the concrete footings (or foundation) have to go down four feet, minimum, to get below the frost line. Resting wood directly on top of dirt is never acceptable anywhere for the reasons mentioned above.
I don’t know how long the house has been like that (there was a huge flipping done in 2006, which we have no documentation concerning, and AFAIK the current owners had nothing to do with it as they bought it right after the flip). If we cite code violation, and current owners decide they can’t afford to fix it, and we decide to buy it anyway at a reduced price, but supposing we still don’t have enough to fix it right away, how risky is it to plan to fix it in six months? A year? Two years? Five years?
Indianapolis. It has gone down to 19 below (fahrenheit) this year, IIRC. So yeah.
Kind of surprised (given the “raising up to six inches” problem mentioned above) that this hasn’t been a serious problem for the current owners.
With that notation on the report, will you be able to get insurance? There will be plenty of other houses in your area without this problem. Pass on this one and look elsewhere.
It’s not necessarily a dealbreaker, depending on how many wooden supports there are and how hard they are to access. The repair will be expensive, because you’ll basically have to jack stuff up while excavating for a proper foundation under the existing structure. It sounds like the previous owners did an addition without a permit or inspections, which means all this stuff will have to be permitted and inspected while it’s being corrected.
My advice would be to get some estimates for how much it would cost to get this fixed, and ask for the equivalent discount. If the seller won’t give it, then it’s time to move on.
ETA: But yeah, it’s potentially dangerous, depending on how much frost heave you get, and the wood will rot eventually. The house isn’t going to fall down right away, or anything, but this is a potential big-ticket repair and you should think very carefully about whether you’re willing to take it on within the next few years.
Good question. We have a quote, but it was just based on a phone conversation. I assume someone from the insurance company eventually (before closing) comes out and looks at the place? How does all that work? And if the notation is on the report but it’s also documented as having been repaired, would that generally suffice?
If insurance falls through, then lender refuses to loan, and we can back out of the deal, is how it generally works, correct?
Unfortunately I am not confident that this is true at my price point, given what we’re looking for (at least four bedrooms and two full baths, with a sizeable dining room space preferably not just an “eat-in kitchen”), based on the homes we’ve looked at so far.
We’re waiting to hear back from the seller about the report. We listed all the things we’d like fixed before closing (including this), and they have til the 27th to get back to us. We gave it to them three days ago, and our realtor is expressing some surprise that we haven’t heard back yet, so it looks like this is giving them some pause and trouble…
Overall the inspector said (verbally, at the inspection itself) that he was really impressed with the house. It’s a real shame if we have to pass it up. It’s very extremely perfect for us in multiple ways. Above I said we’re looking for 4 bedrooms but this one’s actually a five bedroom place and given that I work from home that is really, really nice. I don’t know that we’ll find another five bedroom place for what we can pay.
There’s some desperation at work here, to be honest, in that I dearly want to exit our current tiny (1400 sq ft) 3 bedroom apartment (with a family of six)… But if the thing is going to end up costing us $20,000 extra just to fix up that will probably not be possible.
(Well… I mean… if the numbers are anything like what the lender has said, in terms of monthly payments, then post purchase we should have a monthly margin of about $800/mo. At $500/mo we can do $20,000 worth of repairs in four years… Guess it all depends. We’ll need to see actual numbers in any case.)
For a repair like this, involving jacking up the house, I’m assuming we’d have to all be out of the house for the duration? For how long, do you think?
I don’t think you’d have to vacate the house for the duration if it’s jacked up.
In another forum, someone is saying that the frost concerns are considerably lessened if the crawl-space in question is bone dry, which, per the inspector, it is. Is this so?
What about rot?
Surely not. My in-laws had the ground floor completely rebuilt while still living upstairs. The floors were supported by props.
This is a huge red flag to me.
No reputable contractor would build wooden columns with no foundation— in violation all the standard construction techniques used in cold climates.
So you may be buying an illegal building which has no permit. This isn’t just an engineering problem–it could be a major legal issue as well.
Be careful.
This may not be relevant to the OP’s situation, but when I had my pole barn built, I didn’t want the poles sunk in the ground. So I had them use Perma-Columns. They were $100 each, but (IMO) worth every penny.
It’s a BFD. No one is going to buy that house without deducting for the cost of that repair.
Assuming the house is not ancient a column directly on the ground means that whoever did the work was shortcutting or did not have clue, also how long has the column been on the ground? With this as a revealed defect the house is almost unsalable to anyone relying on bank financing unless the problem is fixed. In your scenario I would talk directly to the seller and lay out what has to happen and deduct the cost of the repair from the price offered.
Do NOT fall in love with the house.
This. Go to the City building department and get copies of all the building permits for the house. If the house is priced significantly below other comparable houses, it may be that you’re finding out why.
If somehow it was permitted and the inspector was just sloppy, it still sounds like the kind of problem that would show up as a deal killer on the pest report. I would expect any mortgage lender to require that it be fixed before the sale. On the other hand, that’s a major incentive for the sellers to pay for the fix – if they don’t, they’re not going to be able to sell the house to anyone.
This may not be nearly as bad as it seems. I see from another post that the location is IN.
First thing to ask is which columns and how many? The report says “some”, so not all. Depending on the structure of the house, the columns could be considered “minor” and only support a certain portion of the house, perhaps an addition, or a porch?
Adding a footing under an existing column really isn’t that difficult if there is sufficient height to allow work to be done. It basically means temporarily taking load off the column in question, then digging a 4’ deep (min) hole and filling with concrete.
So, is there more information you can share?
Last year I put in an offer on a beautiful house with the same issue, wood supports on a dirt floor.
The estimate to have it fixed was $25,000 to $30,000 but there were other issues so that may not be the cost just to replace the supports. Water was seeping through the stone foundation so there was also that work and regrading the property to have water run away from the house instead of towards it.
I thought about offering a much lower price, the house eventually did sell for $45,000 less than the asking price, but the home inspector advised against it because he said you never know what other issues you are going to find when you get in there and start poking around. It can quickly turn into a money pit.
I don’t know what the law is where you are but once my realtor and the selling realtor knew about the problem it had to be disclosed to potential buyers. This puts the seller in a position of having to have it fixed, coming down in price or taking the house off the market.
If the seller agrees to fix it great, if they agree to come down in price you may have trouble getting a mortgage/insurance on a house that needs major work.
You could try for a FHA 203K mortgage which will give you the money for the repairs but then you’ll have to pay mortgage insurance which can add a considerable amount to your monthly payment.
Good luck finding a contractor who will give you an estimate on a house you don’t own. Most of them won’t do it because there is a chance you won’t buy the house and they just wasted their time. I got a few to give me a rough estimate sight unseen and they were all in the same range and all with the same warning that until they go in there and started the work it could go a lot higher. Then again, I could be lucky and it would be less, but not a risk I was willing to take.
Good Luck!
I know the frustrations of buying a house.