The crawl space photos below show, at least, a couple obvious concerns as far as the longterm well being of this home. The first issue, and I will cite it first as it is mandated as a concern by Washington State law, is that the so-called piers under the posts are wood. The one at the left looks like firewood, round side down. The posts at the right photo are on an assortment of wood pieces, the idea being to get them to fit, sort of. State law says wood to earth has to be called because the pier wood will rot, in this case leaving the posts laying flat on the ground. Then they too would rot or become infested with other wood destroying organisms. That issue of the posts falling down serves as an introduction to the second problem -- the structural design is very poor. The posts are crooked in places, have no positive connections, are on tiny piers that would be too small even if they were concrete. This was a cabin on a pier and post foundation, no foundation at all, hence you can see clear through to the woods behind. There were about 30 of these make-shift piers and posts, all pretty much the same. The obvious immediate recommendation here is to eliminate wood to earth contact and to have repairs and modifications made by a contractor familiar with foundation work.
Steven L. Smith
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Hey Steve,
Do you see piers like this often? It sure don't look too safe.
Sean Allen
Sean,
No. I can say that I do not see piers like that very often. I see a number of pier and post problems but this one is unusual and has more design problems than is typical. Often the problems I see have less to do with original design and more to do with wood destroying organisms that have moved in for the chow.
Marlene,
I would not be able to put such photos in your report. I will be darned if I am going to have a realtor have a stroke over my report. I did, once, have a buyer get so worked into a frenzy about buying a house that, instead of coming to meet me to debrief on the inspection, he was hauled away in an ambulance -- seriously. Ended up he was okay but hyperventilating. Funny thing is the house was okay.