Well, it probably took 40 hours to fix the 40 posts, which was not too bad considering I only recommended that one be fixed—-which would have taken only about 40 minutes.

It is not uncommon to find support posts in crawl spaces compromised for one reason or another.  Even in new construction this can be true because it would be pretty unusual for a jurisdictional inspector to go down into the space after the deck is installed.  On an inspection a while back I found one such post that was not properly supported by the footing and not attached to the footing per current requirements.  I called for repairs to be made to that support post and even included a picture in the report.

When I went back for the re-inspection I found that someone had done an incredible job of attaching metal brackets to all 40 of the support posts throughout the entire crawl space—–like the ones in the picture below.

As you can see there are two heavy metal brackets attached to each post.  Each bracket required roto-hammering holes into the concrete to bolt the brackets to the footings and then the brackets were bolted to the posts.  This is how it was done, in spite of the fact that there was already the required metal strap attaching the post and footing (as can be seen on the left side of the right post).

This next picture is what the post I called for repairs to looked like—-prior to repairs.

This next picture shows what the post looked like—-after repairs.

As you can see, except for the angle of the picture, the post remains the same, and most likely will continue to do so for another 40 days and 40 nights.

You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it take a bath—or read instructions.

By Charles Buell, Real Estate Inspections in Seattle

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