Texas is known for a dismal record when it comes to residential slab foundation performance. The excuse heard more often than anything is that the soils are ‘bad’.
Hundreds of thousands of houses have foundations that have performed well for decades.
Thousands upon thousands of commercial building structures and skyscrapers have foundations that perform just fine. How many leaning high-rise buildings have you seen?
Tens of thousands of bridge overpasses have foundations that properly support the bridges. When was the last time you heard of a bridge overpass foundation failing?
How is it that so many house foundations fail in Texas? Here’s your recipe.
Start with a big bowl of money.
Add a state legislature that has enacted laws that protect homebuilders and penalize homebuyers when the homebuilder builds a poor quality house.
Add New Home Contracts that have ‘Binding Arbitration’ clauses that allow an arbitrator (who knows he/she will never see the homeowner again) to, in the face of common sense, make rulings that favor the homebuilder. Rulings that cannot be appealed and are final and binding.
Add a homebuilder who hires an engineer the builder knows will save the builder money on foundation costs.
Add an Engineering profession that, at one time was highly regarded, and that can no longer be relied upon for proper slab design and proper oversight during construction.
Add a local municipal oversight system that does not challenge ‘engineered’ foundation plans.
Add laborers that don’t take pride in their workmanship, that just want to get paid and move on to the next victim’s house.
Add overworked, underpaid municipal inspectors who are asked to inspect far too many houses in one day. Better yet, skip the municipal inspectors and build the house outside the city limits, so as to not have to obtain any permits to build.
Add a homebuilder’s ‘third-party’ inspection program that causes homebuyers to believe that they don’t need to hire their own, unbiased, Home Inspector.
Add a 10 Year Structural Warranty that has the homebuyer believing that if anything major is wrong with the house, there is a 10 year Warranty (read the warranty for all of its ingredients).
Add Inaccurate Statements on Federally Insured loan documents and no meaningful prosecution of homebuilders.
There are more ingredients. However, they don’t change the taste much.
