Hi

so I have an issues with my foundation when I bought it. The issue is common with all the houses in the area. The foundation is sinking and 25 feet of one side of the house slants 2-3 inches. You can only tell if you where to stand inside close to the wall. The other issues is that since the foundation is sinking the surrounding concrete angles towards my home and causes water to sit and pool by my house.

Foundation specialist have said this is not an urgent issue, however no one can tell how far the settling will go or if the water may cause the home to sink more. The home is on level ground no hills nearby.

Question 1. Would you fix or leave it alone. The cost to fix averages 60k to 80k. The cost includes raising foundation with stilts that go down to the bedrock, carbon armor to the cracks and foam to lift cement around the home.

Question 2. Would you cheap out and just throw leveler on the floor and cover with new flooring and just fix any other issues that comes along. Leveler and few Vinyl planks to finish off the room. This option would only cost about 2 grand.

Question 3. Leave it alone and just rent as is until mortgage is pay ed off. After paying off mortgage, property tax, and insurances and getting full rent I come out about 300$ ahead per month.

Question 4. Anyone have any similar experience and would like to share what they have done. I am torn because I have been told this issue of mine is common and that the house will not fall apart. It just may appear weird to tenants. So the house should stay firm and be good for my life time. However its hard to spend 80k for repairs with money I do not have and will not recover in a very long time span. The foundation guys say if I fix the foundation it will last another 100years, but to be honest I probably wont be alive by then.

Good questions there.

As a long time resident of southern Calif in the past, I've got some experience with these problems.

First, to answer your questions in order:

Q1 - I'd leave it alone.

Q2 - If there were cracks in the slab that I could put my finger into, I'd fill the cracks and cover with cheap carpet. If, and only if, the cracks were getting bigger - that is quickly (over the period of only a couple months or less), only then would I think of trying to stabilize the area where it was sinking. I'd immediately look into WHY the land in that spot was sinking (water flow? saturation of the land and slippage along an underlying slope? or if the original lot had a lot of fill put in that area that was not compacted correctly when the house was built (this happens a lot).

Q-3 - That's what I'd do unless the crack was quickly getting larger.

Q-4 I'd NEVER spend that kind of money under those circumstances unless an engineer said the place was in imminent danger of collapse.

Now, in general, from my experience of over 22 years in the Santa Barbara area, where there are a LOT of hillsides. When the cities fill up with settlers, the first settlers there take the best places. Then, over the years (often more than 100 to 200 years) the less desirable areas get filled with houses - the riverbeds, swamps, and the steeper hillsides. When this happens, ESPECIALLY more than about 50 years ago (1970's), the developers or homeowners often just brought in any thing they could get cheap/free, threw it in the low spots and then covered it with a few feet of dirt and built on it. Often, they did not use the right fill or compact it in lifts to make a good job, especially if they were just going to sell the place. These natural low spots or are low for a reason - water drainage. The new fill, over time then either settles or it may start to slide, depending on the underlying strata if it is a hillside (much of coastal Calif is underlied by tilted shale (think earthquakes and tilted slopes caused by these) with several feet of dirt over the shale due to years of dust and leaves, etc. When the rains saturate the overlying dirt and reach the shale the water starts to run along the surface of the shale and the dirt goes with it (causing a landslide). Of course, the best remedy is not to build on slopes like that, but you know some people will do it anyway just like they will build in a riverbed or a swamp.

If you're lucky, your problem is more of the swamp or riverbed type and the settling over the years goes slowly and after maybe 30 years the settling pretty much stops because it's done all it is going to do. However, if the house is on a shale slope, then a wet year , especially after fire takes away the vegetation, could result in a collapse at any time (just look at the collapse in La Conchita a few years ago).

raised foundation that about 3 foot high. cracks are spaghetti size to hairline. what just bothersome is the 2 feet closest to the wall that you can feel a slope along the 25 foot wall.

some people get turned away because they think it may collapse on them.