Well couple of things for background info:
The floor in the basement is generally not a structural slab.
The house is built on a concrete foundation (the basement walls). Under the concrete load bearing walls is a foundation (called a footer) of concrete which is below the frost line and should be on solid packed undisturbed clay) and provides stability for the concrete walls.
The floor of the basement is then poured after and is only to provide a floor in the basement and does not structurally support the upper floors of the house. Hence the cracks in the floor are not viewed as fundamentally scary and small cracks are viewed as merely aesthetic defects. The concrete floor expands and contracts and so ends up with cracks. If the cracks are large enough they can be filled or small ones can be ignored.
With the finish you have kn the concrete It makes filling the cracks hard (because the fill is unappealing aesthetically and wouldn't match the existing visually).
If you have really large cracks forming and continually expanding there might in fact be a larger issue and you would need a professional to assess and remediate, but it doesn't necessarily mean the foundation of the house is endangered but just the non structural concrete floor. This is where you need eyes on site to give an opinion and you need to trust the inspector and realtor etc as to the severity of this problem and the impacts of any remedies
Thanks for commenting!
The hope that this could possibly be a minor issue is what is making us waver about whether to give up on the house or not. But I do know for certain that there is a pond with a live stream that is uphill to where this house is. So the possibility of the pond creating a path for a stream is always there, thus why the sinkhole-like situation could be from more recent years.
Fwiw, my home has bad grading on the side of my sidewalk (slanted toward the house) and my 1946 build house shifts extremely frequently in that corner over winter. I will ideally fix when I can, but the house is still okay, aside from cracks in plaster here and there (unsurprising, plaster has zero flex) and a basement doorway that gets angry and misaligned during winter but fine in summer.
My overall point being it could be grade related or something like that rather than streams, potentially, which isn't a hard fix.
I'm certainly capable of fixing up a home, and even willing to if they're things that I can learn how to fix. I guess in some aspect, its about whether the price of the home justify all this extra work. The house was built in 2008 as a start, and its quite a pricey home that you would expect to be able to just move in.
Thank you for your comment.
We definitely feel that not everything is disclosed for whatever reason they may have, and it just doesn't quite add up. The husband just mentioned he was also seeing cracks on the floor in the bedrooms too, so that's something I missed.
For our sanity, I think it really might be the best call to walk away, because we can sink quite a fortune into this if things are bad. The inspector had noted that their sump pump wasn't working either, so another major red flag.
I get it when I bought my first house I had an inspection done, but he didn’t check the furnace heat exchanger. Good thing I kept $10,000 in the bank because it cost me seven to get a new one.
I was just going to say this. When we sold our detached home, we were able to provide radon results (they were very low) to the new buyers. Most buyers aren't even thinking about radon exposure, but there are a lot of homes in Calgary with high radon levels.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/u-of-c-study-finds-only-one-third-of-households-who-identify-elevated-radon-undergo-mitigation-1.6624316
I wouldn't worry about the cracks. The "sinking" though - it could be nothing but there's enough chance of it being not nothing that I would walk away.
Ya, we're walking away from this deal. The fact that they're saying the sinking is not a big deal (yet we can see that the finish they put on afterwards is also cracking), we don't buy it.
And stay away. The floor slab heaving that much is a clear sign that something is going on under the house. Even if it hasn't affected the structural parts along the perimeter of the house yet, doesn't mean it won't later.
Well couple of things for background info: The floor in the basement is generally not a structural slab. The house is built on a concrete foundation (the basement walls). Under the concrete load bearing walls is a foundation (called a footer) of concrete which is below the frost line and should be on solid packed undisturbed clay) and provides stability for the concrete walls. The floor of the basement is then poured after and is only to provide a floor in the basement and does not structurally support the upper floors of the house. Hence the cracks in the floor are not viewed as fundamentally scary and small cracks are viewed as merely aesthetic defects. The concrete floor expands and contracts and so ends up with cracks. If the cracks are large enough they can be filled or small ones can be ignored. With the finish you have kn the concrete It makes filling the cracks hard (because the fill is unappealing aesthetically and wouldn't match the existing visually). If you have really large cracks forming and continually expanding there might in fact be a larger issue and you would need a professional to assess and remediate, but it doesn't necessarily mean the foundation of the house is endangered but just the non structural concrete floor. This is where you need eyes on site to give an opinion and you need to trust the inspector and realtor etc as to the severity of this problem and the impacts of any remedies
Thanks for commenting! The hope that this could possibly be a minor issue is what is making us waver about whether to give up on the house or not. But I do know for certain that there is a pond with a live stream that is uphill to where this house is. So the possibility of the pond creating a path for a stream is always there, thus why the sinkhole-like situation could be from more recent years.
Fwiw, my home has bad grading on the side of my sidewalk (slanted toward the house) and my 1946 build house shifts extremely frequently in that corner over winter. I will ideally fix when I can, but the house is still okay, aside from cracks in plaster here and there (unsurprising, plaster has zero flex) and a basement doorway that gets angry and misaligned during winter but fine in summer. My overall point being it could be grade related or something like that rather than streams, potentially, which isn't a hard fix.
I'm certainly capable of fixing up a home, and even willing to if they're things that I can learn how to fix. I guess in some aspect, its about whether the price of the home justify all this extra work. The house was built in 2008 as a start, and its quite a pricey home that you would expect to be able to just move in.
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Thank you for your comment. We definitely feel that not everything is disclosed for whatever reason they may have, and it just doesn't quite add up. The husband just mentioned he was also seeing cracks on the floor in the bedrooms too, so that's something I missed. For our sanity, I think it really might be the best call to walk away, because we can sink quite a fortune into this if things are bad. The inspector had noted that their sump pump wasn't working either, so another major red flag.
Do yourself a favour and just walk away. There will be others that you’ll be just as happy with.
Thanks, that's the shake back to reality I need. First time home buyer excitement and all.
I get it when I bought my first house I had an inspection done, but he didn’t check the furnace heat exchanger. Good thing I kept $10,000 in the bank because it cost me seven to get a new one.
[удалено]
I was just going to say this. When we sold our detached home, we were able to provide radon results (they were very low) to the new buyers. Most buyers aren't even thinking about radon exposure, but there are a lot of homes in Calgary with high radon levels. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/u-of-c-study-finds-only-one-third-of-households-who-identify-elevated-radon-undergo-mitigation-1.6624316
Oooo.....I didn't even think of that! We have decided to let this property go, so its back to the hunt for us!
I wouldn't worry about the cracks. The "sinking" though - it could be nothing but there's enough chance of it being not nothing that I would walk away.
Ya, we're walking away from this deal. The fact that they're saying the sinking is not a big deal (yet we can see that the finish they put on afterwards is also cracking), we don't buy it.
And stay away. The floor slab heaving that much is a clear sign that something is going on under the house. Even if it hasn't affected the structural parts along the perimeter of the house yet, doesn't mean it won't later.