Support comes in all shapes and sizes.
There is moral-support, child-support, spousal-support, support-hose, military-support, and athletic-support. This post is about “foundation-support” and how without enough of it, bad things can happen. Lack of proper support does not always result in “REALLY” bad things happening—-as in this case—-but perhaps bad enough to make the floors springy or squeaky. Or perhaps doors might not open and close properly.
In other cases, all it might mean is that all of one’s marbles would roll to the same place.
Many homes that have crawl spaces, have support posts spaced along central carrying beams. These posts, depending on the spans and sizes of beams, might be anywhere from 4 to 10 feet apart. Modern building standards require that these support posts to be attached at the top and the bottom. The concrete footing for the support post in the following picture is out of sight under the plastic ground cover. We can clearly see that it is not attached at the bottom—-in fact the post is ¾” from touching anything.
It was not a difficult “fix,” and because this was new construction, and the builder had not even left the site yet, they were able to quickly address the issue—before doors would not work properly.
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Charles Buell, Seattle Home Inspector
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