You probably have seen outside decks where the posts supporting the deck go
down to concrete piers. The piers look like this...

http://ogremkv.files.wordpress.com/2...-002-small.jpg

This is the way it should be done. You don't want the wood directly touching
the ground because termites would then have a path to the wood and then to
your house. Also moisture in the ground can rot the wood.

Perhaps the porch was sloping at one point and someone "fixed" it with a bit
of additional support. However the support has wood directly in contact with
the ground. If there is enough room under there for someone to sit up or be
on their knees, it probably would be easy to jack up the joists with a
couple of car jacks, install concrete piers, then add the wood supports. I'm
doing this to my bathroom and the materials will not cost more than $50 and
it will take maybe a few hours of work**.

But if there is not much room to get under there and work (like in the above
picture where you could only lay down after that deck was finished), then it
would be pain. This was the case with my bathroom floor. And here is the
"**"... I first had to dig out the crawl space so I could get in there to
do the work! Then had to move some plumbing to make room for a new support
beam. This has taken months and would have cost a homeowner thousands of
dollars in labor.



"John Wheeler" wrote in message
Hello,

I am not a handyman. I received a home inspection report that has a
defect which reads:

In the crawl space, under the front porch, I observed a structurally
unsupported stud wall vertical support structure for several floor
joist ends. The stud wall's 2x6 wood bottom plate rests soley upon the
vapor barrier, with no observable concrete footer support -
recommended further evaluation by a structural professional.

Is this a big problem? Can someone with knowledge on this matter
explain what is going on in layman's terms and what the potential
ramifications are?

Thanks