HeyBub wrote:
My son's two-story home has a cracked foundation with attendant settling.

He noticed a crew working on a house a few doors down and had a chat with
the crew chief. The crew chief (named Guadeloupe) came and did a quick
survey of my son's home. The chief said the problem could be fixed with 18
piers (each going down, in this soil, about twenty feet) and that his
experienced crew (Juan, Jesus, Allesandro, and Moishe) could do the work
over a two-day period.

For $3,000.

This is in dramatic contrast to the presumed cost of $15,000+ from the kinds
of firms one normally thinks of when contemplating house leveling.

My son's rhetorical thought - and with which I agree - is "what could go
wrong?" Even if the leveling didn't "take" and a more professional firm had
to come and make "adjustments," the heavy-lifting (pardon the bad metaphor)
would have already been done.

I tend to think that house-leveling is similar to replacing a breaker-box -
not rocket surgery, but intimidating simply because it is so unusual, and
that common sense plus the right tools, in experienced hands, are mostly
what are essential.

Couple of other bits of knowledge: Guadeloupe is the brother of my son's
neighbor and Guadeloupe knows my son has a gun.

Any random thoughts on the subject would be appreciated.


And this 3k includes actual permits and insurance and so forth? Yeah, it
may work, having a seat-of-the-pants repair job, done off the books. But
the downside is that if they eff up, and the house collapses, insurance
company may just look at your son and giggle. And they will also call
the local inspection folks, and let them in on the joke. If this is out
in the boonies in a 'no inspection' area, I might be tempted myself. In
town with lots of eyes peering out of nearby houses, no way.

--
aem sends...