12/12/2023
A common problem I see with new construction houses is the lack of communication between contractors. This is especially noticeable in high-end homes that have a TON of different companies and builders involved.
In this particular case, a footing for a deck is buried 6 inches below the ground level, which means that a post holding up the corner of a covered porch rotted almost completely away.
Oftentimes an error like this doesn’t get noticed for a few months or even years, and usually only after the potential issue has become a definite problem.
Now, I wasn’t there, so I can’t say anything for sure, but this is what I would guess the happened to this post:
The company that poured the foundation also poured some footings for the deck (which is original to the house). When they did this, the entire yard and the rest of the development did not have black dirt or landscaping yet, and the foundation company put the top of the footing at the current ground level.
Later, the framers put the deck on the footing. The framers might have noticed that the footing was too low, but “it’s not my problem if the foundation guys don’t know what they’re doing, I’ll let the project manager deal with it.”
Then comes the landscapers, who grade the entire yard and find that the level of the footing is well below the finished height of the landscaping. But… “it’s not my problem if the framers didn’t think ahead, I don’t get paid enough to deal with this.”
And now an untreated post has 6 inches of dirt and 4 inches of rock covering it. Maybe the general contractor saw it and made a mental note not to hire those landscapers again, but “I’m already 3 months past my completion deadline, I can’t afford to get set back any further.”
And 7 years later, what do you know but the deck is starting to lean a little to one side. Enter a contractor who diagnoses the problem, jacks up the post, cuts it off higher up, caps the footing to bring it above the ground level, and leaves. An easy enough solution, but one that would have been completely unnecessary if, 8 years earlier, a concrete foreman would have given enough of a rip to call the project manager and asked, “hey man, how thick is the landscaping gonna be? Cause it sure would suck for the homeowner if this post rotted off in 5 years.”
I’m bringing back a generation of builders who give a rip. The fact that we do EVERYTHING means that if we make a mistake, it isn’t someone else’s problem—and we make a lot less mistakes in the first place because our experience of the whole process means that we would think ahead enough to check the finished level of the landscaping before pouring footings.
Colossians 3:23-24
