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00:00:08.480Welcome to the Premier Foundation Repair Podcast, hosted by Julie Miller, president of Premier Foundation Repair.
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00:00:18.000If you have cracks in the exterior or interior of your home, your doors are sticking, or your house is trying to tell you something, you're in the right place.
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00:00:35.920Sometimes a quick fix seems tempting, but when it comes to your home's foundation, shortcuts can create bigger problems than the ones you started with.
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00:00:36.880Welcome everyone.
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00:00:43.600I'm Julie Schwenzer, co-host and producer here with Julie Miller, the president of Premier Foundation Repair.
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00:00:46.799Julie, it's great to be back with you and to learn from you.
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00:00:48.000Good morning.
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00:00:49.439Yeah, good morning.
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00:01:02.079So when you deal with this, you see homeowners often try to tackle repairs themselves, but they have some foundation issues that could be a different story than the ones that they they think they're looking at.
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00:01:08.560What's one of the biggest dangers that you see when people try to DIY foundation fixes?
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00:01:21.599Well, it's it's really a specialized skill, and that's um, you know, one thing that that homeowners usually don't have because it's not their their industry or their um what they're familiar with.
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00:01:36.400So um, you know, a lot of people will dig holes and and place concrete or sand or rocks or any, you know, whatever they come up with trying to figure out how to stop their foundation from moving.
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00:01:52.319Some of them even go as far as um, you know, digging like a hole and putting concrete in it and then um putting a jack and trying to lift their house, but they don't really understand how the lifting process works, and so they can break their slab.
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00:01:56.400Uh certainly create you know more damage on the inside.
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00:02:03.200Um, it's not really a do-it-yourself type project of like you know, many home improvements are.
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00:02:05.200This is just not one of them.
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00:02:23.840Uh, I've seen them where they, you know, will dig out a whole section of a foundation and they'll just pour concrete underneath it, thinking that's gonna stop it, but it really doesn't stop it because it it's still too close to the surface and in our clay soil uh, you know, in our area.
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00:02:28.479So it's still subject to this shrink swell that we get in our in our soil.
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00:02:38.159So, and what they do by pouring the concrete all the way up to the bottom of the slab is they have now limited access to actually be able to get to the slab.
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00:02:49.120So if we have to do work, we have to come in and we have to take all that concrete out so that we can actually install peers the the proper way and lift the house with the peers.
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00:03:02.159So, do you see in a lot of the cases when there was a DIY attempt that if they hadn't done that, then it would have been easier for your company to come in and correct the situation?
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00:03:18.400Of course, because like if someone digs a one of my projects, I saw the the homeowner had dug like 30 feet on the side of this house, and they went down about you know two feet, and then they poured, you know, like two by two section of concrete.
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00:03:26.960So, in order for me to get in there and lift the house, I had to dig that whole section out, break out all that concrete, and then put the piers in.
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00:03:36.960So, you know, what started out as a homeowner trying to repair it cost actually ended up costing them more money because we had to go in and take out what they had done.
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00:03:40.479Wow, that sounds like an enormous task.
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00:03:41.840It was.
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00:03:49.680Um, why do you think the methods often fail to address the root cause of the foundation movement?
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00:03:56.560Is it due to a lack of understanding what actually, you know, what's in place there to begin with?
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00:04:02.479Well, I do think it's it's it's a lack of understanding, and then of course it's a lack of equipment.
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00:04:07.199They don't have the proper equipment that's required to to do the job.
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00:04:16.879So they don't have um, you know, drilling machines or they don't have uh uh our hydraulic presses that we use when we inject peers.
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00:04:29.439So they usually don't have this type of equipment because this is a very specialized type of equipment and it's not really something that you can, you know, go down to the hardware store and pick up kind of thing.
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00:04:35.040So um they just lack the the knowledge and they lack the equipment, basically.
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00:04:35.839Yeah.
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00:04:46.720And what are some of the risks too that homeowners face when they do try to go to the store and they're using some patchy materials or tools that they are not familiar with?
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00:04:49.920I mean, how much more damage are they gonna cause to the homeowner?
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00:05:07.839Well, depending on what they do, you know, if they start putting um jacks underneath the foundation and start trying to lift it without really knowing what they're doing, they can create a lot more damage in their uh certainly on their interior uh finishes, but they can also crack the slab or break the slab.
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00:05:13.759So you deal with a lot of commercial properties in addition to residential spaces?
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00:05:16.160We do quite a bit of commercial work too.
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00:05:25.120We do um um a lot of warehouses and we do um apartment complexes, uh, those those types of projects.
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00:05:35.839So with the commercial spaces, is there any type of regulation on those or any reports that the owners need to submit to the state or anything?
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00:05:36.959I'm not familiar.
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00:05:38.639No, not to the state.
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00:05:56.480I mean, most most cities require uh permits to do foundation repair work, and so those are of course obtained um, you know, when we get ready to do a project, but that varies city by city, but there's no real state regulation for foundation repair, uh residential or commercial.
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00:06:08.240Wow, because it it seems very intimidating to even try to address the foundation without you know being an expert or being in that industry like you are.
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00:06:11.360So why uh is it just money?
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00:06:12.480Is it just savings?
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00:06:15.199Is that the main reason you see people trying to attempt to fix it?
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00:06:15.920I think it is.
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00:06:19.519I think a lot of people are just uh fearful of the cost.
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00:06:29.199Um, and and certainly that cost can vary widely, depending on the scope of work, uh, number one, but also depending on the contractor that you choose.
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00:06:36.319You know, there are there are less expensive companies and there are very expensive companies.
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00:06:38.319And I like to think we're somewhere in the middle.
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00:06:42.480We're not the cheapest people in town, but we're not the most expensive either.
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00:06:51.360Um, so it's I but I do think a lot of the do-it-yourself type of repair attempts are are money driven.
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00:07:01.120Do any of the recent cases that you've worked on, does anything stand out to you as whoa, this was pretty wild what they tried to do.
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00:07:06.160Oh, I've I've seen some really crazy, some really crazy things that people do.
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00:07:20.959They uh like I said, they'll they'll they'll dig a hole and they'll they'll place the jack underneath the foundation and they'll they'll they'll jack it up a little bit, and then they'll just leave the jack and then they'll concrete it in so it doesn't, so that the jack doesn't move anymore.
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00:07:25.279But again, they've concreted it all the way to the top of the foundation now.
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00:07:28.879So basically that's just a wasted effort.
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00:07:36.079We we don't usually take small pieces of concrete out, and I say small anything that's like two foot by two foot.
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00:07:46.639Um, we usually just go next to it and and bypass it, unless they've lifted it too high, in which case we do have to break it out to to release the pressure on the slab.
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00:07:47.839Oh wow.
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00:07:50.079And then what about safety concerns?
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00:07:55.040Imagine this is possibly dangerous work for a non-professional to be doing.
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00:08:11.120Well, yeah, especially if they um if they were to have the hydraulic presses that we use, if you don't if you don't know what you're doing, you you can get injured in the process of of trying to to use a piece of equipment that you're not familiar with.
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00:08:16.000Um, you know, we use jackhammers and sometimes those can get away from people.
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00:08:27.920Um so there's, you know, it it has to be a someone that really understands the business and knows what they're doing before they can go in and actually uh do a do-it-yourself repair.
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00:08:35.200It's not, it's not like a a painting project or a fence installation or something of that nature, right?
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00:08:43.840That is is um a doable project for a lot of homeowners, but this this is more of a specialty uh type of repair.
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00:08:55.200Um in our industry, this has been historically, it's been uh trained foundation contractors that have been in the business and there's they specialize in this field.
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00:09:15.120And now we see that there's you know, remodelers, roofing companies, um, other types of uh professional contractors that because they're a contractor, they just go into the foundation repair industry also, but they don't really have a lot of experience there.
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00:09:27.279So I always caution people to stay with a company that's been doing this for a long time and not pick up day workers from the corner and try to get them to do foundation repair.
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00:09:29.279Yeah, absolutely.
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00:09:30.960That is solid advice.
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00:09:31.919Right.
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00:09:33.840Yeah, so Julie, thank you again.
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00:09:37.360We always appreciate your advice and a deeper look at this industry.
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00:09:38.000Thank you.
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00:09:39.200Thank you.
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00:09:44.240Thanks for listening to the Premier Foundation Repair Podcast.
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00:09:55.120For more than 35 years, Premier Foundation Repair has helped DFW homeowners protect their most important investment by fixing foundation problems right the first time.
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00:10:00.720Because when it comes to your home foundation, close enough isn't good enough.
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00:10:11.679Homeowners, call Julie at 972 417 0823 for a free consultation or visit Premier FoundationRepair.com.
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00:10:14.240Premier Foundation Repair.
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00:10:16.639Fix it right the first time.
