Roof

Interior Foundation

Interior Foundation

Interior Foundation

Interior Foundation

Interior Foundation - Ceiling

This picture says it all. Immediate repairs are needed.

There are two common factors on the exterior of a house that contribute towards basement water penetration: 1)faulty grading and 2) downspouts that drain too closely to the house. In this picture, the concrete block wall in the crawlspace and floor are wet from water penetration. Correcting the exterior grades and extending downspouts will correct basement water penetration problems 90% of the time.

Not only has water gotten inside the crawlspace in this picture, it has gotten the wooden sill plate wet and softened it. The sill plate is in place as part of the wooden framing for the stud walls. This situation has created conditions which are conducive to mold growth as well as the presence of termites.

When new homes are constructed with poured concrete foundation walls and floors, a perimeter trough is sometimes installed. The purpose of the trough is to catch any water that may come in through the walls and channel it towards the sump pit where it can be pumped out of the basement. However, the trough in this picture is still filled with the styrofoam board that was put in place to create the trough when the floor was poured after the walls were already in place. The styrofoam should have been removed but never was. The builders will need to come back and remove the styrofoam.

Poor planning in this picture is going to make somebody's job more difficult in the future. The studded out walls in this basement were installed over top of the sump pit cover. When the sump pump inside the pit eventually wears out and needs to be replaced, removal of the cover will be incovenient to say the least.

Some builders use engineered trusses or I-joists to construct the floor assemblies in new houses. These trusses are composed of a top flange, a bottom flange, and the webbing in between. Regardless of where the truss is, the top and bottom flanges should never be cut or notched. The I-joist in this picture shows the top flange completely cut in half to make room for plumbing pipes. This could have been avoided with proper planning on the part of the builder.