In this episode of the Structure Talk podcast, Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry welcome Michael Simpson, a geotechnical engineer, who shares insights into forensic engineering, the impact of water management on foundations, and the differences between serviceability and safety in structural integrity. The conversation emphasizes the need for proper assessment and management of foundation problems, particularly in residential settings. Michael discusses the complexities of foundation settlement and movement, highlighting the importance of understanding soil types and their impact on construction. He explains the phases of movement after construction, the significance of monitoring foundation issues over time, and the various tools and techniques used for assessment. They also cover common repair solutions, the need for tailored approaches in foundation repair, and the potential impact of neighboring construction on a home’s foundation.
You can contact Michael through mrsimpson45@yahoo.com.
Takeaways
Tessa shares her hybrid living situation between Florida and Minnesota.
Reuben discusses the challenges of recording podcasts while traveling.
Michael explains the role of geotechnical engineers in assessing foundation issues.
Forensic engineering focuses on existing structures with damage to determine causes.
Water management is crucial in preventing foundation problems.
Trees can affect soil moisture and contribute to foundation issues.
Settlement is a normal process in homes, but monitoring is essential.
Homeowners should document cracks to assess movement over time.
Serviceability issues often arise from cosmetic cracks rather than structural failures.
Proper assessment can prevent unnecessary repairs and costs. Soil type significantly affects foundation settlement.
Settlement can occur immediately or over several years.
Monitoring foundation movement is crucial for accurate assessment.
Multiple readings over time provide better insights into movement.
Common repairs include piers, compaction grouting, and stem wall repairs.
Tailored solutions are necessary for effective foundation repair.
Neighboring construction can impact foundation stability.
Understanding soil maps can aid in assessing risks.
Regular maintenance can prevent costly repairs.
Communication with homeowners is key to managing concerns.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome Back and Life Updates
02:55 Introduction to Geotechnical Engineering
05:53 Understanding Forensic Engineering
08:55 Foundation Types and Issues
11:48 The Role of Water Management
15:06 Identifying Foundation Problems
17:50 Serviceability vs. Safety in Foundations
28:16 Understanding Soil Settlement and Movement
30:52 Identifying Extreme Foundation Issues
32:57 Monitoring Foundation Movement Over Time
34:18 Evaluating Foundation Damage and Repair Options
37:48 Tools and Techniques for Foundation Assessment
39:50 Common Foundation Repair Solutions
44:48 The Importance of Tailored Solutions in Foundation Repair
50:11 Addressing Neighboring Construction Concerns
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben Saltzman (00:01.066)
Welcome back to the structure talk podcast. has been too long. We’ve taken a few weeks off. Tessa. Good to see you. What’s new.
Tessa Murry (00:07.897)
Hi Ruben, good to see you too. I didn’t realize that we were taking three weeks off until we were, but it’s good to be back.
Reuben Saltzman (00:15.47)
until I kept cancelling calendar events without even telling you.
Tessa Murry (00:21.985)
You know what? worked out. My life has been a little hectic and busy the last few weeks, so it was actually perfect to have a little break from the podcast, but I am happy to be back.
Reuben Saltzman (00:31.055)
Okay, why was your life so hectic anything you want to share?
Tessa Murry (00:34.745)
Well, I know We definitely don’t we definitely don’t well, you know what I am spending time between Florida and Minnesota now I’m calling both states kind of I guess it’s like a hybrid living situation. So So I’m in Tampa right now, but other times I might be broadcasting from Minnesota. So stay tuned Yep, yep
Reuben Saltzman (00:36.46)
I’m putting you on the spot now. We didn’t talk about this. We don’t plan our shows.
Reuben Saltzman (00:47.575)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (01:00.94)
Love it. Love it. And we were, we were canceling the show because I was traveling and it just, I found it does not work well for me to try to record these podcasts in the middle of other things. My mind is just not there. Equipment’s not there. Yeah. So, and, and we’re going to have a few more of those coming up in the next couple of months. I’m going to be traveling a lot. So, but it’s, it’s
Tessa Murry (01:14.769)
No, it’s not easy. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
Tessa Murry (01:23.181)
Yep.
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (01:27.094)
It’s nice to see you again and it is sunny and beautiful here in Minnesota. We’ve got a balmy 50 degree day here or something like that.
Tessa Murry (01:34.265)
Hey, that’s a nice day. That’s a great day. Yeah. I don’t want to one up you, but it’s like 78 and sunny here. you know. Well, pretty soon it’ll be like 95 and humid. So you’ll win every time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Reuben Saltzman (01:37.836)
It’s a great day. It is really nice. Yeah. For Minnesota.
Shut up.
Yeah, yeah, and then it’ll be it’ll be my turn. Yeah. Well, we’ve got we’ve got a guest on who’s got us both beat on the heat index today. We did we had RK Bob Brown, also known as just Bob Brown on our show maybe a month ago or so. No, was five or two months ago.
Tessa Murry (02:05.442)
Mm-hmm.
Think it was I think it was around Christmas time. Yeah, I it does. Yeah
Reuben Saltzman (02:11.339)
Was it time flies? Okay. Well, we had him on the show to talk about foundation problems and all the crazy stuff that foundation contractors like to come out and sell people all the stuff that they don’t really need. And we must, he must have mentioned the term geotechnical engineer about 57 times on that podcast. And
Tessa Murry (02:32.793)
Thank you.
Reuben Saltzman (02:35.903)
And since then, I have not even found a good one in our area to refer business to, but he really emphasized the importance of having a geotechnical engineer evaluate this stuff when he got problems with foundations. And so the universe brought us a geotechnical engineer and we’ve got someone to interview today. Unfortunately, he’s not out of Minnesota, but I’ve got I’ve got Michael Simpson on the show today and he’s out of the.
Tessa Murry (02:55.991)
I’m
Reuben Saltzman (03:05.793)
Phoenix area. Michael, how you doing today?
Michael Simpson (03:09.071)
Hey guys, very well, thank you. Yeah, I, as you said, I’m a geotechnical engineer. I’m registered in Phoenix and Nevada. I was registered in Louisiana, but I let it go ahead and expire because I wasn’t doing much work out there lately.
Reuben Saltzman (03:26.271)
Okay, all right. And so you worked with Bob Brown for a number of years, right?
Michael Simpson (03:33.168)
Yes, so I’ll give you my background. I got out of college and worked geotechnical engineering firms for a few years and then I started my own firm. I did that for about 10, 12 years doing transportation and forensic engineering. Did a lot of work for banks like Lehman Brothers before they collapsed. And then the 08 bubble hit and I…
Reuben Saltzman (03:36.077)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (04:01.487)
You know, the firm, like everybody in Arizona got hit hard. So I found a couple of contracts for some, like myself and a couple of employees and went out and started doing FEMA work. like forensic engineering for FEMA, initially on Hurricane Gustav, but then moved over to Katrina in New Orleans. So I was in New Orleans for about 10 years doing that. And then, while I was doing that,
I had done work for Bob when I was doing geotechnical engineering years ago, and he was starting to build up his forensic group for his foundation company. So myself and another engineer went over and we were doing it like a part-time work for him. I made my way to Puerto Rico and was working on the Hurricane Maria and the earthquakes in Puerto Rico.
and still doing side work for Bob. And then I was ready to come home. so Bob’s main engineer was getting ready to retire. So I became a principal engineer for Bob and his firm for a couple of years before he sold it. So I mean, that’s my back story and how I got into forensic and geotechnical engineering.
Tessa Murry (05:13.465)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (05:18.061)
Let me ask you a question quick. What is forensic engineering? How would you sum that up?
Tessa Murry (05:18.292)
fascinating.
Michael Simpson (05:24.813)
I would say that that’s when structure is already existing and it has damage and you’re trying to figure out what’s causing that damage. So in the case of obviously, you know, for the FEMA work, was was this damage storm related, you know, or earthquake related. Can FEMA fund it in the case of geotechnical engineering? A lot of times it’s.
Tessa Murry (05:37.827)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (05:43.865)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (05:48.067)
Hmm.
Michael Simpson (05:53.43)
There’s settlement and what’s causing that settlement or there’s walls bowed and what’s causing that wall to bow. What’s causing the damage to the house? Is it soil related? Is it something else? So that’s forensic engineering.
Reuben Saltzman (06:08.715)
Okay, all right, got it. And so has most of your work been focused on the residential side?
Tessa Murry (06:09.4)
Wow.
Michael Simpson (06:16.337)
Certainly with Bob it was almost all residential. He had set up a nice system to, and I think he talked a little bit about it, where he had his texts go out and collect all the data. Then as the engineer I could just sit and look through the data that was collected and determine what was going on with the house.
So yeah, a lot of residential, certainly when I was doing stuff for Bob. And then again, when I was doing straight geotechnical engineering.
That was more, this Bob alluded to this, there’s kind of two ends. There’s the design on the front end. So when new homes are being built and there’s mass grading and all that, you bring geotechnical engineers to design the earthwork for those giant residential developments. But then on the back end, the forensic part is you bring a geotechnical engineer to figure out what’s causing the soil to continue to move.
Reuben Saltzman (07:18.657)
Okay, all right, got it. And so how much work do you think you did related to home inspections? Did you ever go out after home inspectors would call stuff out?
Tessa Murry (07:19.193)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (07:34.546)
Yeah, it’s combination and this is true in all engineering. You know you have your staff that your your direct engineering charge of, know your technicians and whatnot go out and kind of do the field work so to speak and and it’s this is true for all all engineering fields and then sometimes you have to go out and take a look yourself. So but in terms of how many got it.
I was with Bob for about seven years and I’d say in those seven years we did hundreds and hundreds of homes. We looked at hundreds of moms. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (08:10.221)
Okay. All right. okay. Well, yeah, I hope I’m not getting too off track with my line of questioning, but I guess mine’s just kind of specific. I’d say, well, before I ask.
Tessa Murry (08:14.317)
I have so many questions. Ruben, you go ahead, but eventually I’ll come back and I’ll ask you some.
Tessa Murry (08:29.983)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (08:34.425)
What portion of the homes you look at had full basements versus slab? And Bob probably told us the same same answer to this, but I’ve forgotten.
Tessa Murry (08:39.531)
Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (08:43.535)
Yeah, so it’s interesting. So in Phoenix, we would generally have what you call conventional foundations, know, footings with a slab on grade. And then we have post tension slabs. A lot of the newer homes are well since the 90s have been gone to post tension slabs. And then when you get up into northern Arizona and the more mountainous areas, you have a lot of like walkout basements and crawl space homes.
So I think that would probably match more with what you have. Were you in the Twin Cities in Minnesota there? Yeah, so you’re on a river and you have shallow groundwater, it looks like to me. I just quickly looked at Google Earth to kind of get a feel of the geologic setting just because I figured you’d probably want to ask me something about Minnesota.
Reuben Saltzman (09:12.385)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (09:18.017)
That’s right. That’s right.
Tessa Murry (09:19.022)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (09:30.219)
Yeah. Thank you.
Michael Simpson (09:33.37)
Yeah, well, I’m not, you know, this is part of the important part of a geotechnical engineering. You really need an engineer who’s familiar with the area, with the geologic setting, and to understand, you know, how to repair and what is going on.
Tessa Murry (09:42.025)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (09:49.616)
So I did look and I did enough work done in New Orleans that I get, while New Orleans isn’t the same, it’s similar in that it’s next to a river and that shallow groundwater. And so I got a feeling for what you have, but yeah, up in Northern Arizona, we have a lot of walkout basements, a lot of crawl spaces, which I think are a similar condition to what you guys have there.
Tessa Murry (10:01.113)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (10:13.067)
Okay. All right. Got it. And what portion of foundation problems do you think are attributable to poor water management outside the house?
Michael Simpson (10:29.457)
It’s interesting. I always tell people when I’m looking at things when you know when you watch like the Unsolved murders and things that the police always look to the family first, right? They’re like, it’s the husband. They look at the husband first and then they look at the family in Foundation and and Forensic engineering it’s always water first. It’s either
Tessa Murry (10:41.497)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (10:54.787)
it’s getting too much water or it’s drying out too much. Basically the water isn’t, the moisture content isn’t staying stable or it’s the fill. It’s either the fill or the water and if it’s fill it’s because water got into the fill. And then on the third element I would say especially with homes it’s trees.
Reuben Saltzman (11:04.777)
Uh-huh.
Reuben Saltzman (11:12.353)
Haha.
Tessa Murry (11:13.528)
Hmm.
Michael Simpson (11:19.697)
And the trees affect the moisture as well because they’re either getting watered and causing, you know, the person’s, they’re too close to the home and they’re getting water next to the home, right? Or they’re sucking the water out from under the home and drying out that soil and causing a problem that way.
Reuben Saltzman (11:19.735)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (11:37.013)
Okay, what about roots?
Michael Simpson (11:39.923)
Roots too. it’s funny. had a you Bob was talking to you about expansive soils and that’s a real issue here in Phoenix.
you know, when the water, because we have dry soils, right? So I believe and I’m not sure, but I’m guessing Twin Cities has really wet soils next to the river. in geotechnical terms, it’s like wet of optimum or dry of optimum. So in Arizona, the soils are always going to be dry of optimum. And so when water gets into clay soil, it wants to swell.
Whereas if you’re wet of optimum and a tree starts sucking the water out of a clay soil, it’s going to want to shrink, right? So Bob was talking about how we were dealing with expansive soils here in his MLM system and some things like that. Well, one time we had a pretty good debate about we had done the manometer level survey and there was a heave in the slab and we went round and round and
Anyways, long story short, we had to tear out the slab and there was just roots curled up all under that slab from the tree that was right outside of the wall there. yeah, it roots are a very big issue. Trees are a big issue. The rule of thumb I would tell people is when that tree is mature, you do not want the canopy of the tree hanging over the footprint of the house. That’s
Tessa Murry (12:51.077)
Mmm. Wow. Wow. Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (12:54.1)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (13:09.945)
Hmm. Really? Yikes.
Reuben Saltzman (13:09.953)
Whoa.
Michael Simpson (13:11.545)
You want it that far away? Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (13:13.453)
Whoa, okay. All right. I’ve got some work to do as I look outside my window. No, just kidding.
Michael Simpson (13:17.425)
You know, there’s… My step-sister has an oak tree. She lives in California and in touching an oak tree in California, I think it’s a death penalty. So, you know, and her cannot be hung over it.
Tessa Murry (13:29.559)
Yeah. Well, just going to say, we’ve had people on our show recently from California talking about just the different issues they have with fire and how they inspect a house to make sure it’s safe. And I mean, that was one of the key things is you can’t have bushes, shrubs, trees right next to the house. now, more time in Florida, I look at trees too, and I think about insurance rates and people not getting approved for insurance because they’ve got trees that are close to their house or limbs hanging over with hurricane damage.
Reuben Saltzman (13:29.805)
You
Michael Simpson (13:40.581)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (13:48.145)
Right.
Tessa Murry (13:58.723)
There’s a lot of reasons why it’s not good to have trees over your house, I think. Yeah.
Michael Simpson (14:03.107)
Yeah, trees are great. They just need to be far enough away.
Tessa Murry (14:09.439)
Yeah, yeah. Well, so okay, Michael going back to that podcast we did with Bob Brown a while ago I remember kind of just hearing him talking for the first time which I’m ashamed to admit this about geotechnical engineering and what a geotechnical engineer did and why it was important to have someone with that skill level in to assess foundation issues and you know, I’d say like in our industry a lot of times as a home inspector we do our best to you know
Michael Simpson (14:15.236)
huh.
Tessa Murry (14:36.767)
evaluate the situation and determine if you know the cracks or the offsets we’re seeing the foundation are cause for getting you know a further opinion from an expert in the industry or you know we say okay monitor this crack the changes then go to an expert but do all these things in the meantime to try and reduce shifting and movement and usually it’s water related right but i think you know for the most part our industry is a little uneducated about
who to refer homeowners to. We used to refer them to just regular, I guess, civil engineer Ruben. Is that who we would direct people to?
Reuben Saltzman (15:14.835)
It would a structural engineer typically.
Tessa Murry (15:19.895)
Structural, yeah, okay, structural engineer. So what would your advice be, Michael, to people in this industry that are home inspectors or even a homeowner that you’re seeing a foundation that has significant problems with it? Who do you go to first and how do you find that person? What would your advice be?
Michael Simpson (15:39.718)
Well, so my advice would be, and I know you guys are like, as home inspectors, you’re dealing with a transactional situation. My advice to homeowners would be before it gets to a transactional situation, like we all came home for COVID and we sat and looked at the cracks on our walls and thought, uh-oh, is that crack something? You know? So what…
Tessa Murry (15:58.937)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (16:02.673)
I think the best thing to do for the homeowners before you get to the transactional stage figure out is the crack moving. So let me let me back up a bit when a home is built there’s three stages of settlement. There’s the settlement that happens immediately as it’s being constructed. There’s a secondary settlement or initial what do you call it? A.
Tessa Murry (16:11.735)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (16:30.021)
Well, we’ll just call it an initial settlement after the initial construction with especially with fine grain like clay soils, you’ll get consolidation and then you’ll get a secondary long term consolidation. And an extreme example of a long term consolidation is the leaning tower of Pisa, which is that been having long term secondary consolidation for 500 years. So, you know, if your house was built on all sand,
Tessa Murry (16:53.033)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (16:59.953)
then you’re not gonna get, you’re just gonna have the initial settlement during construction and then as long as the sand was compacted, you’re not gonna get a secondary or even a tertiary consolidation. So that said, especially, so the first thing I would look at is like, okay, I’m sitting in a house that’s 30 years old.
The settlements mostly done by that point. It should be. So if I see a crack and I start to think about it and let’s say I want to sell my house next year, I would take a picture of the crack. I would date it. I might even go around the whole house and take pictures of all the cracks that are maybe, know, wider than an eighth of an inch. And the other thing I would do is I would put that blue painter tape, a piece of blue painter tape across it.
Reuben Saltzman (17:26.529)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (17:37.401)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (17:50.362)
and see if it rips open over time. Because the thing with soil movement is it’s very slow. And so you put a little piece of blue tape across it. And then if it rips open, that’s a good indication that it’s still moving. If it doesn’t rip open, then it’s probably not moving, right? And you can go ahead and fill the crack and sand it and make it look nice again. And then because I think as soon as you start bringing in
Tessa Murry (17:50.563)
Mm-hmm. Mmm.
Michael Simpson (18:16.817)
you know, a foundation company or an engineer, less so with an engineer, an engineer comes and looks at it and says, yeah, I don’t think you have a problem. Then you now have a kind of clean bill of health for the house. But if you bring in the foundation company and they’re trying to sell you peers, now you kind of have you have a disclosure thing you have to think about. Right. So I think it’s Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (18:33.465)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (18:37.557)
Mm-hmm, and you may not even need it, right? Because they’re there to sell you something, so you may not even need that repair. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (18:40.578)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (18:45.945)
So before you bring anybody in, is it even moving at all? Because settlement’s normal. Cracks are pretty normal for homes. so my thing would be on their own, see if it’s moving or not. And then the next part is, if you have a 30-year-old home and it’s still moving, you’ve got to add something caused it to move. So are you getting water somewhere? Do you need to add gutters?
Do you need to add some, you know, do you need to move the water, you know, 10 to 15 feet away from the home? Yeah, grade it or, you know, work on your grading and drainage and then monitor that crack some more after you’ve had a lot of time to, for that water to the moisture content to, to become constant. The house will stop moving.
Tessa Murry (19:20.717)
The grade.
Michael Simpson (19:39.218)
and then those things will settle down. It’s when you can’t get those things under control that you then maybe have to look at a more active kind of repair. know, maybe it’s peers, maybe it’s something else. And then the other part is, you know, a lot of times you get just the age, you know, the age of the foundation. Like up in Northern Arizona, again, we have a hundred plus year old homes that are built on what’s called rubble foundations. You know, it’s just stacked rock.
And so it may be time to do some repointing or some things like that, but you know, it doesn’t necessarily require the super expensive steel in the ground solution.
Reuben Saltzman (20:21.965)
Sure, And let me ask you about the painter’s tape. I’ve never made a recommendation like that before. And I remember Bob Brown talking about that. And something I’ve thought came up later in my head that, wait a minute, if you got kind of a moist foundation wall and you put that blue painter’s tape, is it actually going to stick well enough for the tape to tear? Like, is this going to be worthwhile? Maybe it is. I mean, if you recommend it and you’re saying it, obviously there’s cases where it’s going to work.
Michael Simpson (20:27.281)
Michael Simpson (20:31.423)
huh.
Tessa Murry (20:43.927)
you
Michael Simpson (20:44.625)
Yeah, it’s a good one. Right.
Reuben Saltzman (20:51.787)
What we’ve always said in the past is if you’ve got these little cracks, like patch them with mortar, something that’s not going to flex. And then if it does open, it’s, it’s going to break open again. And the other reason I like doing it with mortar is that then if you want to paint the wall and kind of hide the crack a little bit more, it’s, not going to be quite so obvious. Do you have a problem with that recommendation?
Michael Simpson (20:53.765)
Huh.
Michael Simpson (20:59.161)
Yeah, right.
Tessa Murry (21:12.397)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (21:14.437)
Right.
No, would, you know, not at all, other than the tape is cheap and fast. Yeah. The other thing is, you know, is, you know, in Arizona, particularly, you know, you’re going to get a thermal, thermal expansion and in and things like that too. So sometimes it can just be that that’s causing it to, you know, you get a little bit from thermal expansion.
Reuben Saltzman (21:20.086)
Okay.
Yeah, that’s a lot easier. Yeah. Okay.
Tessa Murry (21:23.774)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (21:46.8)
And then also, depending on what part of the country you’re in and seasonally, you get a moisture variation in the soil. And especially if you have an expansive soil, Bob and I called it, it was almost like the house was breathing because the soil would be going up and down with the moisture variation, seasonal moisture variation. So it’s something else to keep in mind.
Tessa Murry (22:02.808)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (22:07.974)
sure. Okay. All right. Got it.
Tessa Murry (22:10.359)
Hmm. You know, you probably get called out to the, you know, obviously the foundations that have issues going on and cracks that are, you know, indicative of problems. But what would you say is like the percentage of cracks in foundations that actually do need some sort of active repair?
Michael Simpson (22:27.953)
Well, that’s an interesting question because it’s called serviceability. And so almost none of the cracks that come across are what I would call safety issue or collapse issue. It’s really a… It just doesn’t look good. You have a crack in your tile floor or you have a crack in your drywall.
Reuben Saltzman (22:40.717)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (22:41.177)
Hmm.
Michael Simpson (22:52.945)
And it’s a serviceability issue. And then if the house is moving slowly and you like we just talked about you patch the crack and then it opens back up. Well, did it really cause a problem? Probably not. Other than I have to have to, you know, patch and paint this crack again. So and then that part also leads to personal.
Tessa Murry (23:00.963)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (23:10.125)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (23:15.857)
preferences, you know, there are homeowners that don’t care about the crack and then their homeowners that just that’s almost like an obsession, like they want no cracks anywhere. and, you know, and so it’s interesting because, you know, we go ahead and install, you know,
Reuben Saltzman (23:24.557)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (23:25.045)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (23:34.704)
peers because they were like, no, we don’t want it to move at all. not, you know, and so we want this to be crack free and like, all right, well, that’s expensive and we’ll go to it. Where or whereas some people are like, no, it’s fine. I’ll deal with it, you know, and as an as an aside, you know, I was just reading there was an article in the Wall Street Journal on the waterfall house in Illinois.
Frank Lloyd Wright house famous and iconic here in America Yeah, falling water. Yes. Is it I thought it was Illinois but but anyway I was they were talking about Yes Yeah, and it’s is seven million dollars to to do this rehab on it and it’s got it’s got leaks from the water
Tessa Murry (24:04.629)
are you talking about falling waters? I think that might be over in, is that Pennsylvania maybe? I’m not sure. Yeah. Falling water. Yeah. Frank Lloyd Wright House with water going through it, which is all of them. Sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Michael Simpson (24:29.073)
And I thought, you know, my house has a couple of leaks in it itself, you know, and I’ve I got to get a roof out and this and that. And I was looking at it. I’m like, well, how bad could it be? Frank Lloyd Wright’s house has it. You know, I mean, what the hell? Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (24:40.205)
Good enough for him.
Tessa Murry (24:40.677)
Ugh. Yeah, I’ve been through several of his houses and they all have little Tupperware containers out catching all the leaks.
Michael Simpson (24:50.968)
Exactly. but see, you know, so some people that matters a lot in some people it doesn’t, you know, and it really is a service ability issue. Now one of the, you know, kind of along those lines, and I’m sorry if I’m over talking here, but the
Tessa Murry (24:56.281)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (25:04.375)
No, go ahead, please.
Michael Simpson (25:07.227)
You know, Bob, you’d asked the interview with Bob, like, what’s the threshold? And there’s, you know, there’s the calcs, you know, tilt and, and deflection and engineers love to hang their hat on that, but it’s kind of a silly thing to hang the hat. mean, it’s, it’s okay. You know, use it as a tool, but, ultimately it’s a mathematical model and we don’t need a mathematical model for houses because they’re already there. have a full scale model and it’s called the house. So,
Tessa Murry (25:36.441)
Hmm.
Michael Simpson (25:37.124)
We can look at the tilt and deflection, but the house is telling us where it’s moved. You know, when we run the Menominee survey, we can see areas that are higher and lower.
But what’s interesting on that even is Arizona State, did back in 2000, they did a study where they went out and did manometer tests of brand new slabs freshly poured for residential homes. And none of them were flat. And on average, there was a half inch differential on the average. In the worst case, had a 1.2 inch differential. So nothing’s ever poured perfectly flat to begin with.
Tessa Murry (26:11.267)
Thank
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (26:16.977)
in the big picture, it’s really about what is that homeowner, what is their tolerance for these types of things? And that’s really what it comes down to. So, I got a lot of thoughts and I got a little confused on where I was going with that. But anyway, it is a serviceability issue.
And it’s not very infrequently is it a safety issue. There’s only been about maybe I could probably count on my hands. You know, well, all those hundreds of houses, how many were actual like safety concern? All of them were more serviceability concern.
Tessa Murry (27:00.099)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm. And if it’s a, and I hear you saying like if it’s a serviceability issue, it’s not a major structural concern. You don’t really have to do any major repairs, it sounds like.
Reuben Saltzman (27:03.871)
Okay, okay, that’s good to know.
Michael Simpson (27:15.697)
Not, yeah, not, no, you don’t. I mean, it, it, can patch the crack and then if it reappears, you can patch it again. The house isn’t going to fall down. The one of the example I was going to give you also was the, I, had a residence where it passed until deflection, but they couldn’t open their front door and it was a PT slab. And it just, dropped off like an inch in a very short period, a very short distance, but it’s still passed until it deflection.
Tessa Murry (27:19.394)
Okay.
Michael Simpson (27:44.44)
And so we went ahead and had him install some peers to lift the front end of the house up. And then I got into a kind of debate with another engineer who said, well, pass the tilt deflection. And if the house continued to settle that probably would have worked itself out. I said, well, how many years does he have to wait till he can open his front door? You know, and, and not continually trim that front door, you know? Yeah. So you can have things that are like, well, it mathematically it works, but
Tessa Murry (27:50.08)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (28:03.673)
Yeah, quality of life issue. Yeah.
Michael Simpson (28:14.543)
realistically serviceability wise, it’s not realistic for that homeowner to continually trim their front door, you know, and so you might, in that case, they may want to go ahead and get some peers or something installed.
Tessa Murry (28:16.057)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (28:23.702)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (28:29.273)
Yeah. Going back to your, you you mentioned there’s kind of like three phases of movement. What’s the window? Like if you had to put year, assign years to it, what’s like, what’s the window for kind of the initial settlement after construction? What’s reasonable for a homeowner to kind of see the first crack show up and for how long should they continue to kind of move a little bit?
Michael Simpson (28:52.613)
Yeah, so obviously it depends on the soil type. If it was a pure sand, you know, like on the beach sand, then it was compacted and everything was assumed. We’ll assume all things were compacted and done properly. You shouldn’t, you should, that would be it for the settlement, right? During construction, all the, what’s called is excess pore pressure. air, so if you think about soil, the soil matrix in the ground,
Tessa Murry (29:11.641)
Hmm.
Michael Simpson (29:19.415)
It’s the particles of soil and then there’s air and there’s voids right with air in it and then there’s water. Okay, so and the voids either fill up with water or fill up with particles as it consolidates, right? So
Tessa Murry (29:24.665)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (29:37.2)
When with sand, so when you put a big load on it, the air needs to escape, right? With sand, it can escape immediately. So you don’t have what’s called excess pore pressure. With clay soils, it’s so tight that it’s hard for the air to escape. And so that’s why it’ll take longer for the consolidation to happen.
Tessa Murry (29:43.361)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (29:58.64)
Now, once water hits it, it facilitates that soil to move easier. And while it’s reconfiguring, then it’s going to settle. So in a sand soil, you’re going to get an immediate, the settlement should happen immediately and then not. In a clay soil, I can’t remember the number, but I think it’s like 90 something percent should happen in the first 10 years, something like that effect. what, man.
Tessa Murry (29:59.263)
okay.
Tessa Murry (30:04.647)
Mm hmm.
Okay.
Tessa Murry (30:24.407)
Okay. Well, that’s longer than I thought, yeah.
Michael Simpson (30:28.209)
Yeah, but that’s why like a new home construction they you know, they Whatever the they’ll do the repairs, you know for whatever three to seven years after construction something along those lines, so Then that’s why because it you’re gonna get those movements and that’s why even when especially when people call me out to look at new homes
Tessa Murry (30:42.285)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (30:51.729)
really apprehensive to do too much because it’s still in that phase of it settling.
Tessa Murry (30:59.437)
That window, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (30:59.499)
And you just say this is normal, this just happens. Yeah. Okay.
Michael Simpson (31:01.445)
Yeah, it just happens.
Tessa Murry (31:02.755)
Hmm. Wow. What do you have? How would you define? I was just going to ask you. How would you define extreme? What would that look like?
Michael Simpson (31:05.859)
Unless you see something extreme, you know.
Michael Simpson (31:12.849)
Well, there was a house down in Tucson we were dealing with. had a foot of differential. So yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, and it was a it was a PT slab and actually I guess still there. Yeah. Yeah, OK, sorry, my my computer went to sleep real quick. Yeah, it. It.
Reuben Saltzman (31:20.437)
What? What? I’ve never seen a foot.
Tessa Murry (31:21.483)
Whoa.
Tessa Murry (31:32.075)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (31:41.138)
because it was PT, sort of tilted all together, but it was a foot in tilt. And ultimately we ended up having to use piers to kind of level it all out and whatnot. And that was, think, within five years of construction. So we were like, yeah, you got to do something.
Reuben Saltzman (31:59.629)
Okay.
Michael Simpson (32:04.721)
I’m trying to think of other, the guy with the door, that was pretty new to the construction, but it was like, well, yeah, you gotta push that back up. it was enough that you couldn’t continue, you would end up having to trim the door constantly and that just didn’t seem reasonable. On the other hand, there’s been a lot.
A lot of time, most of the time with newer homes, we would say, hey, we’ve, we’ll go out, we do the manometer reading and then we’d come back and say, we’ll come call us back out in a year and we’ll reread it and see what happens. And that would be another thing I would make a point on is with, with all these things, you really need to observe it over time. So one manometer reading, while that’s great, you can see where it, seems to have moved and you could correlate that to where maybe damages are appearing on the house.
It’s best to have two readings to know if it’s continuing to move and not just over a period of time. Nine months to a year? Yeah.
Tessa Murry (33:02.073)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (33:04.354)
Wait, when you say two readings, mean over a period of time? How long of a period of time?
Tessa Murry (33:08.961)
Yeah, more data points better.
Reuben Saltzman (33:12.895)
Okay, got it. All right, sorry, go on. just.
Tessa Murry (33:13.929)
okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (33:15.235)
Yeah, and I kind of like a year because then you’re reading it at the same time. You know, like if you read in December, you’re rereading it in December so that you’re not getting any crazy moisture variations or other temperature variations, things like that. Yep. So, yeah, that.
Tessa Murry (33:21.305)
you
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yep. Similar data points.
Reuben Saltzman (33:26.839)
Tracking. Yep, I get that.
Michael Simpson (33:34.282)
You know, that’s that’s the thing. you know, and even in court cases where it’s come up and we would maybe have one manometer reading, that’s first thing that the attorneys like to hit on is we only had one, you know, one reading and like, yeah, but look at all the damages where there were low points, you know, that clearly was, you know, there’s times we were going to do with that with just the one reading and that’s fine. But what I would tell homeowners is
And this is of the same thing with the blue tape or these other things, you know, or taking pictures of the cracks to see if they’re opening up. What you’re doing is you’re measuring this this over time to see how it’s moving and if it’s even really moving at all. And so, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (34:15.18)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (34:15.299)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (34:18.723)
And to that point, you know, go back to the ASU study, you know, nothing is poured flat. So if you get a reading and it’s not flat, well, of course, because nothing’s perfectly flat when they built it. So now you really want to know how it’s moving. you get. So my point is like just relying on a manometer survey alone wouldn’t be good. Like if you had a house that wasn’t passing, say in deflection, but had no damages and
Tessa Murry (34:27.949)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (34:48.325)
there wasn’t any, you know, and had no, it wasn’t like the foot differential or whatever, you know, and all the doors and windows opened and the house operated normally. Well, who cares if it passed until deflection then it’s, it’s, it’s fine. That may have been, that may have resulted from the construction, you know, when it was poured. whereas you could have one that’s not passing until deflection and, and, but
Tessa Murry (35:02.137)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (35:09.687)
Sure.
Michael Simpson (35:15.183)
you see that there’s a tree that’s caused something or you know, I even had a house. There’s no thing I always look at aerial photographs to see how how the vegetation and how the roof changed over time. Not just for when maybe they added some additions or whatever, but also did they change it from a.
Tessa Murry (35:17.944)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (35:28.441)
Mm.
Michael Simpson (35:35.949)
As you know asphalt shingle roof to a tile roof and did they increase that load and is that what’s causing the cracking? As opposed to the soils, so there there’s a lot of things you got to look at when Yep
Tessa Murry (35:43.501)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (35:47.011)
Hmm, a lot of variables. What kind of tools would you say you need and you use for your evaluations? what’s your process look like typically?
Reuben Saltzman (35:59.5)
Yeah, obviously the manometer.
Michael Simpson (36:01.409)
Yeah, so go out, draw up the house. And it’s funny because I have a couple other engineers, they’re wanting to kind of start up a business doing, know, kind of helping homeowners out with this. So we’re trying out different software right now to figure out what’s the easiest way to draw up that floor plan quickly. But so draw up the floor plan, run the manometer,
Tessa Murry (36:02.486)
And it’s.
Tessa Murry (36:24.211)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (36:29.731)
Locate all the cracks. Generally, we’re not worried about second and floors that don’t have foundations where the floor plan is mostly focused on the area where the foundation systems are. Draw up the locations where there’s cracks. Look at the…
Tessa Murry (36:43.437)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (36:49.209)
the aerial imagery over time to see how that house has changed over time, how the landscaping has changed over time. The USDA has soil maps. So even if you don’t collect soil samples and get them run, you can go to the USDA website and look at what the soils are for that region. In Arizona, we have a couple other soil maps that show us where like soil hazards are, such as expansive soils.
Tessa Murry (36:54.957)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (37:11.449)
Hmm.
Michael Simpson (37:19.203)
certain areas. So, but even without that, if I look at the soil conservation map and see a lot of clay soils, I know that that has potential maybe for that area and for that house. So yeah, that’s a pretty good overview of what we would look at. I’m sure I’m missing a couple other things, but you know, if it’s a crawl space, might see how far into the house we can get and get information from that.
Tessa Murry (37:19.531)
Okay. Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (37:20.806)
Mmm.
Michael Simpson (37:48.849)
Um, and then, uh, yeah. So those are types of things.
Reuben Saltzman (37:53.454)
I just had an interesting thought, know, insurance companies already have the floodplain maps and they won’t ensure you’ll they’ll charge a ton more if you’re on a floodplain. How long is it going to be before they start using these USDA maps and they say, wait, you’ve got really expansive soils. It’s going to cost you more in insurance to have a house here. We’re deleting this portion of the podcast.
Tessa Murry (37:59.637)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (37:59.719)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (38:10.069)
- Don’t give them that idea, Reuben. Yeah.
Michael Simpson (38:12.525)
Yeah. Yeah. No, you know, it’s fine. just bought a property on a up on the Verde River up here where I got I’m going to build a house, but and it’s in a floodplain. And so and but after being in Louisiana for all those years, I’m going to, know, it’s about six feet up to be out of the floodplain. I’m just going to go ahead and take it on up to 10.
Tessa Murry (38:27.895)
No.
Michael Simpson (38:38.487)
so that we just park cars under it and not worry about it. yep, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (38:38.561)
Mmm.
Tessa Murry (38:42.041)
put it on piers. Yeah. Wow. You know, that’s interesting to hear your initial assessment that it takes such a, you know, I was thinking you’d be in there with a tape measure, like, you know, microscopic stuff evaluating the cracks and all that, but you’re really taking a zoomed out approach as well, looking at the history of the house and the, you know, the change in vegetation and landscaping and all of that and structure. And that’s really cool, I think. Yeah.
Michael Simpson (39:07.889)
Right. Well, because if you think about it, if they put, you know, if they did an addition, that always cracks between the main house and the addition because they’re settling at different rates, you know, like in different amounts.
Reuben Saltzman (39:19.053)
Sure, of course.
Tessa Murry (39:19.321)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Simpson (39:22.209)
Or where if they, especially with walkout basements, you think about they dig out the basement, they build the wall, and then they backfill behind there. And that backfill always has problems. And if it’s just backfill in landscaped area, nobody cares. But when that backfill, when you have like a of a stepped home with a backfill zone behind it, then the floor starts cracking in that area. And they’re like, hey, what’s going on here? And it’s always the fill.
Tessa Murry (39:34.777)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (39:38.809)
you
Tessa Murry (39:50.431)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Michael Simpson (39:51.29)
You know, so, yeah, so when you look at aerials and you look at how a lot was developed, you can sometimes see that. so, you know, one time I looked at is a guy was complaining about cracking his house and we were looking at it and I zoomed down on the aerial and on the other side of the hill was a giant quarry. I’m like, well, you might want to talk to them because I guess they’re probably doing some blasting over there. And we think it may be that it been the causes, the cracks to the house.
Tessa Murry (40:15.903)
Wow. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. You know, I’ve got just kind of a general question. This, you know, I know it’s the answer is going to vary depending on the type of crack and the type of soil. But if you had to kind of list the top type of repairs that you assign to most of the cracks that you see, like, is there a classification of
Reuben Saltzman (40:20.673)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (40:43.229)
like the most common types of repairs out there, you say? Like, Piers is one and what else is out there and what do you most commonly recommend for, for what you see?
Michael Simpson (40:54.696)
Yeah, so like in if so, let’s start with the fill when you have a problem with fill you can do compaction grouting, but they also now have They have other inside compaction grouting but it’s like compaction grouting but it’s Polymers to they expand so they inject them in there and then they’ll expand
Tessa Murry (41:21.617)
I’ve seen that like a cocking kind of material that you that you push into the crack.
Michael Simpson (41:25.169)
Yeah, but it turns into like foam. They use it to lift slabs sometimes. can go on that same material. Now there’s a couple companies that have developed ways to inject it into the soil and bring it up. A lot of DOTs or departments of transportation are using it to deal with some of the fill issues that they have.
Tessa Murry (41:29.985)
yeah, okay. Okay.
Tessa Murry (41:42.777)
Hmm.
Michael Simpson (41:45.714)
So that would be one. Another very common one, maybe more so in Arizona is the stem walls where get the steel starts to expand from rust and cause the horizontal cracking. And so you have to chip that out and clean up the steel and then patch that. So there’s a lot of that type of work.
Tessa Murry (41:46.145)
Interesting.
Michael Simpson (42:15.875)
Yeah, the peers, you know, we used to drop the plans and we would actually call them like.
There would be like, well, I can’t remember the Nate, the term we use, but it wasn’t like, Hey, you don’t, we’d tell them, you don’t have to put these peers in. But if you, know, you’re really concerned or you’re trying to sell this house immediately or, know, and you want it just bulletproof, here’s, here’s a peer plan. So yeah, you get push peers or helical peers. and where you use those types of peers really depends on a variety of things. Like sometimes you might have to put a peer under a window.
And so we’d use a helical for that because the push, you know, pushes off the bottom of the footing to, to get its lift and that the weight of the house for a push pier, it’s the weight of the house that’s driving that pier down. so, so yeah, he’ll call push peers. then it’s something you guys are familiar with, with the, with the basement. Sometimes you get the wall bowing and they have the, different companies have different,
Tessa Murry (43:20.473)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (43:23.761)
kind of steel beams that they use. They connect to the joists and whatnot. We used a lot of smart jacks under the crawl spaces to level floors. And so, and those would usually use also a push peer system. So you put the drive up here down and then set the smart jack on top of it and then level the crawl space floor.
Reuben Saltzman (43:26.167)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (43:26.51)
Yeah.
Yep.
Tessa Murry (43:38.307)
her.
Tessa Murry (43:48.473)
Hmph.
Hmm.
Michael Simpson (43:51.958)
I can’t really say like what was more common or not common. But yeah, those were those are primary things. But, you know, there was this is the other part when you call a foundation company that almost all of them have that kind of set of tools that I just went through, you know, those kinds of solutions. But there’s frequently times where we would see a retaining wall that was failing or something in the solution would be, say, a buttress wall.
Tessa Murry (44:00.825)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (44:10.041)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (44:20.227)
for that retainable, which would be like putting a wall in front of the wall. OK, so or there would be other solutions that were better made more sense. But because the, you know, the foundation companies don’t have that, they’re they’re trying to, you know, I think you guys were calling it, you know, if every the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything is nailed. They’re trying to Yeah, they’re trying to use a hammer on everything. And, you know, so that when.
Reuben Saltzman (44:23.457)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (44:23.993)
and
Tessa Murry (44:41.017)
From the nail, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (44:42.413)
Yeah
Michael Simpson (44:48.493)
know when you bring an engineer in they’re going to look at it and go okay this is probably the better type of solution for this and then you can get the contract as appropriate you know just like the last talking about the rubble foundations you know you can’t put you can’t put a push pier on a rubble foundation you know the what you need to get is a true mason to come in and and rebuild it old school style you know and do it that way so
Tessa Murry (44:55.051)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (44:59.02)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (45:13.997)
Wow. Okay. My sister has a house like that. It was built in the 1800s and they’re actually renting it, but the landlord had some foundation repair work done right before they moved in and it was a very interesting looking repair. They rebuilt like the top, maybe quarter or third section of the wall and it is so uneven in their house that she has a short, maybe four foot bookcase.
Michael Simpson (45:22.373)
Bye.
Michael Simpson (45:29.061)
No.
Hahaha
Tessa Murry (45:42.489)
on the on on an exterior kind of wall corner where they did that repair and she had to move it because it was leaning so much the floor has I should get my level over there it it it probably is six inches between over about 15 feet of difference in height on the foundation and everything just my little nephew who who’s one years old and he chases balls around hill
Michael Simpson (45:42.671)
Michael Simpson (45:47.312)
Right.
Michael Simpson (45:55.055)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (46:01.723)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (46:03.444)
boy.
Tessa Murry (46:09.825)
he’ll throw the ball and it always rolls to the same low spot in the house.
Michael Simpson (46:09.995)
It just rolls down. Yeah, I that would be a good thing. You can. It’s not just monomers. You can use zip levels as another brand that I think Home Depot sells zip levels. They’re about 1000 bucks. And then you can, know, anybody can use it to go measure the levelness of their floor. You just draw it up and then start setting it there and see what the differential between the two locations are.
Reuben Saltzman (46:13.997)
Love it.
Reuben Saltzman (46:25.217)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (46:34.115)
Wow.
Michael Simpson (46:38.961)
But yeah, one time we went out to look at one where a foundation company had used a set of peers that the
Reuben Saltzman (46:39.169)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (46:50.993)
The stem wall and the pier in one part of the house or the stem wall and the foundation in one part of the house, it kind of separated and tilted. And then they tried to use the push pier to push it back into place and it didn’t work, you know, and honestly, the better solution would have been just dig it out, you know, brace it while you re reset a new stem wall and footing in that location. I think would have been the better plan. But they went for it and it didn’t work quite right.
Tessa Murry (47:06.09)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (47:16.564)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Simpson (47:21.073)
Sometimes you can push it back into place, but the question is, okay, when you can’t, then what would you have done? And I think in that case, it would have been better for them to just rebuild that section of the footing. So, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (47:33.26)
Yeah. Well, we’re, running short on time here, but you did say something that made me think of a question you were talking about this one house you looked at where they had a quarry nearby and you said they’re probably doing a bunch of blasting. And it made me think over the years, I’ve had a number of people contact us because you know, our company name is structure tech. So they just assume that we’ve got engineers on staff and they say, well, my neighbor’s doing a bunch of construction on their house.
Michael Simpson (47:55.877)
Bye.
Reuben Saltzman (48:03.065)
And they’ve had a bunch of heavy machinery over there. And, you know, there’s days where I can feel the earth moving. And now I think I’ve got these cracks in my lawn. I don’t think they were ever there before. And I think my neighbor’s construction is ruining my house. Is that possible?
Michael Simpson (48:17.669)
Yeah. generally for regular light residential construction, no, but possibly like for instance, if they were building a basement and rock and they were doing blasting, and you know, so one of the things when I had my own engineering company, we were, we had to measure, we had to, they were, when they were building light rail, here in Phoenix, they were going right next to, a,
it was Indian ruins that were near downtown Phoenix and trying to think what the threshold was but it had a really tight threshold and we had to admit so we had sat there with vibration monitors but so that it’s kind an interesting thing so like vibration monitors when you measure those vibrations the just because you hear it or kind of rattles the window
isn’t the vibration that necessarily causes the damage. you know, it really does take kind of a, you know, I know people think that the, you know, the construction next door might be causing it, but we’ve done quite a bit of vibration monitoring over the years for blasting and all sorts of things. And it’s, it’s a
it I would say you know just regular construction probably not going to cause it but if they’re doing something that’s you know moving you know like like I said blasting or things of that nature then yeah yeah but usually well pile driving might yeah but well so what but then you know typically the contractor is doing it doesn’t want that headache and they usually have monitoring going on so you might
Reuben Saltzman (49:53.421)
How about pile driving?
Reuben Saltzman (49:57.949)
OK.
Reuben Saltzman (50:08.342)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (50:08.569)
Yeah, that makes sense.
Michael Simpson (50:11.407)
Yeah, they usually have somebody sitting with the vibration monitor between, you know, what they’re doing and the nearest, the nearest houses and there. I think it’s two. Was it too weird unit to in each inches per second or something like that. It’s there’s a threshold for construction that’s pretty well established. So when they are monitoring, you know, they’ll know whether they did it or not.
Tessa Murry (50:39.865)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (50:40.125)
Okay, so it’s not impossible, but it’s pretty unlikely. Okay. All right. Got it. Well, you have been a wealth of knowledge and you are just a chill guy. I mean, you just seem to take all this in stride. I wish you were in my area. I would love to refer you for this kind of stuff when people have got these concerns because I think you could talk a lot of people off the ledge.
Michael Simpson (50:41.179)
So yeah, right.
Michael Simpson (50:51.611)
you
Tessa Murry (50:52.093)
Yeah.
Michael Simpson (50:55.44)
Well.
Hahaha
Michael Simpson (51:05.137)
Yeah, I it’s they needed I think, you know, and that’s why I think we’re getting ready to start up a little something out here to just to give them options, you know, because it’s not cheap, you know, it’s it’s what $3,000 per peer, basically, right. So they get a recommendation for for 10 peers, you know, $30,000. And, maybe some gutters would have solved it, you know, or
Tessa Murry (51:05.368)
Hehehehehe
Tessa Murry (51:23.448)
Thanks.
Reuben Saltzman (51:24.066)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (51:32.941)
Hmm.
Michael Simpson (51:33.233)
or you can do a lot of patching for $30,000 you know.
Reuben Saltzman (51:37.175)
Sure, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, if people wanna find you or reach out to you, how can they find you, Michael? With a name like Michael Simpson, good luck.
Michael Simpson (51:40.997)
So.
Michael Simpson (51:45.425)
I’ll give you my, yeah, I’d start, yeah, I’m not, I can get lost pretty easy. I’m just gonna give you my email address. It’s mrsimpson45 at Yahoo, like MrSimpson45. And if anybody wants to reach out and ask me questions, that’s great, no problem.
Tessa Murry (51:48.697)
you
Reuben Saltzman (51:53.357)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (52:00.334)
- OK.
Reuben Saltzman (52:09.397)
Okay. All right. Excellent. Well, Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been fantastic. And, for our listeners, if you got questions for us, show ideas, whatever, please email us. We read them all. It’s podcast at structure tech.com and we will catch you next time. Take care.
Michael Simpson (52:12.049)
Yep.
Michael Simpson (52:16.773)
Thank you. It’s been fun.
Tessa Murry (52:17.293)
Thanks, Michael.
Michael Simpson (52:32.85)
Take care.