Foundation Crack Inspection: When Does a Crack Need a Structural Engineer?
A crack in a foundation wall rarely announces its own severity. Some hairline cracks sit stable for thirty years without causing a single door to stick, while others widen a sixteenth of an inch in a single season and signal a foundation losing its bearing capacity. A proper foundation crack inspection separates those two scenarios […]
Home Inspection Found Foundation Cracks — What Should You Do Next?
A home inspection report flagging foundation cracks lands on a buyer’s desk at the worst possible time — usually with a ten-day option period ticking down and a closing date already booked. Home inspection foundation cracks show up on a surprisingly high share of pre-purchase reports across Colorado’s Front Range, from Denver bungalows on expansive […]
Basement Foundation Inspection: What Engineers Check in a Full Basement
A basement foundation inspection is one of the more revealing evaluations I perform as a structural engineer, because a basement exposes far more of the actual foundation system than a crawl space ever does. Where a crawl space hides most of its footings and stem walls under insulation and vapor barrier, a full basement puts […]
Crawl Space Foundation Inspection: What We Look For Underneath Your Home
Most homeowners never set foot in their crawl space, and honestly, most shouldn’t have to. But that dark, low-clearance gap between your floor joists and the soil is one of the first places a foundation problem shows up, often months or years before cracks appear in drywall upstairs. A thorough crawl space foundation inspection examines […]
Retaining Wall vs. Foundation Wall: What’s the Difference?
Every week I get a call from a homeowner in the Denver metro or up in the foothills asking whether the crumbling wall in their backyard is the same thing as the wall holding up their basement. It isn’t, and the distinction matters more than most people realize. The short answer to retaining wall vs […]
What Is a Retaining Wall? A Plain-English Definition
Every few weeks I get a call from a homeowner in the foothills west of Denver, or out toward Golden and Boulder, standing on a sloped backyard asking the same basic question before we talk about anything else: what is a retaining wall, exactly, and does their yard actually need one? It’s a fair place […]
Retaining Wall Repair: Fixing a Leaning or Failing Wall
A retaining wall that has started to lean, bulge, or crack is not a cosmetic problem you can put off until next spring. When soil pressure exceeds what a wall was built to resist, the damage progresses, and retaining wall repair becomes a race between how fast you act and how much the wall continues […]
Tiered Retaining Walls: Design Rules for Terraced Slopes
Every slope has a breaking point, and I’ve stood on enough failed hillsides in the Front Range to know that a single oversized wall is often the wrong answer to a steep grade. Tiered retaining wall design solves a real engineering problem: how to hold back significant elevation change without building one massive structure that […]
Building on a Sloped Lot: Retaining Wall Solutions in Colorado
Colorado’s Front Range and mountain corridor communities sit on some of the most dramatic terrain in the country, and that terrain rarely stays flat once you get within sight of the foothills. A sloped lot retaining wall is often the first structural decision a homeowner or builder has to make before a single footing gets […]
Retaining Wall Contractors vs. Structural Engineers: Who Does What?
Most homeowners searching for retaining wall contractors assume the contractor is the only professional they need to hire. That assumption holds up fine for a two-foot garden wall stacking landscape block along a flower bed, but it falls apart quickly once a wall starts holding back a slope, a driveway, or the soil beneath a […]