Foundation issues

[Hoosier Red]

My wife has noticed that our house is starting to tip. It's not so bad that you always notice it, but you can see it in the cracks under doors, and depending on where you stand, you can roll something "down hill"

I haven't noticed any cracks in the foundation yet, but has anyone gone through something like this? Does anyone know how much this costs to repair?
I've seen anything from $10,000 to $200,000.

[Sea Ray]

It's usually $3k-15K.

[RBA]

It sad to see how the home manufactures get away with these types of problems. Foundations, roofing, masonry, etc should have some mandatory warranties backed by the manufacture.

[reds1869]

We had the same problem at a house in Columbus. Essentially the builder said that it wasn't caused by poor workmanship, it was just the way the ground was in Central Ohio. Ugh. I feel your pain.

[redsmetz]

My house is 119 years old and we have a variety of cracks around the house. Down the basement there is one beam that has a steel brace which we've never tightened or adjusted whatsoever. With a house this hold, it's somewhat difficult to not have cracks and is, I'm sure, entirely different than what you're dealing with (we have a stone foundation and the floor beams are true 2 X 8 lumber -well, maybe their 12").

[Hoosier Red]

To be fair the house isn't new, though it's also not 119 years old. (Did RFS build it?) I think it was built in 1991.
And there are a lot of factors that would seem to cause issues, it is built on(into) a small hill and there are water issues because of that.

I feel much better after hearing Sea Ray's estimate, $15,000 would suck but hopefully because there aren't any cracks yet we can fix it cheaper.

Thanks everyone.

[GIDP]

I know one things for sure the basement has cracks in it. All basements crack just they are designed to not leak.

As for your problem sorry I got nothin.

[reds1869]

On the subject of old houses, I grew up in one built in 1864. And it had way fewer problems than any house I've lived in or visited since.

[SunDeck]

I do know that the clay down here in Bloomington is VERY elastic. It expands and contracts a lot with moisture gain and loss and can push and pull your foundation quite a bit. My last house had cracks in corners and one ceiling that expanded and contracted with the seasons. It's not very unusual and it may be something you can live with. The safe bet is to have an engineer look at it; they may very well tell you that the house is fine, just moving around a little bit. If that's the situation you can re-hang doors to adjust (I had to re-shim all the doors in an old house we owned in Clifton- the house had settled enough that some of the doors were 3/8" off).

On the other hand, you may end up having to jack up and re-footer some areas of the foundation. That's where the $$$ come into play because it's all underground work. Lots of backhoe time. But get a reliable assessment from an engineer. It's not the job for a handyman to figure out what's wrong.

[15fan]

Assuming all the houses on your street / in your neighborhood were built at the same time by the same builder, have you asked around? Could be that similar symptoms have shown up & been remedied in other houses. Your neighbors might be able to recommend someone to use...or to stay away from.