The Yeager's New Home
The Yeager's New Home
Introduction
I never expected to be composing a section such as this on this blog. Joleen and I fully researched and prayed over the decision prior to the purchase of the house at 119 Tiger Lane. I asked what I felt to be extensive questions about how the building and foundation was constructed. Like most of us born and reared in the country our builder used current accepted techniques and then over-built. The philosophy of using a 2" x 6" when a 2" by 4" would do has served us well for years.
Our thoughts were that we could afford an expensive well-built, home like this because the maintenance should be less than a less-expensive house. Our home was build during a severe two year drought. The builder did his utmost to wet the soil before pouring the slab. Multiple piers were drilled to load bearing rock. Post-tension cables were positioned every four feet and double cables in each beam.
The soil geology of the area is either Taylor Marl or Austin Chalk. These clays are highly plastic and expansive and can exhibit differential soil movement of one to seven inches over a period of time. Concrete slabs, which act as membranes and ride on the soil, undergo huge shear forces which result in stress fractures. As membranes, concrete slabs tend to conform to the soil topography and reduce the evaporation rate of the soil beneath it. Most slabs undergo a center upheaval or "doming" of 1/2 to one inch in the first six years due to the reduced evaporation rate. A slab mounted home is such soils is an expensive proposition as a slab will continue to exact expensive maintenance and repairs both for itself and the structure built on it.
The best home construction for these soils would be founded on a deep pier system with a structurally supported floor. In other words a steel frame home with an extremely expensive pier and beam foundation, vinyl or hardy board siding, and a detached garage on a separate piered. post-tensioned cabled garage. The result is a "sided" home with a detached garage that would cost more than a comparable brick home. Such a home is unmarketable in the current northeast Texas "keep up with the Jones" school of home ownership.
"The best laid plans of mice and men......." Nature and black land prairie soil seem to have conspired against us. As opposed to being saddened and disappointed by what has happened, it may well be that the Lord has provided this opportunity to anticipate, correct, and repair aspects of our home now rather than several years hence when it would be more difficult and costly. As with most situations, it is the light of history rather than the distorted lens of the present that most clearly reveals the Lord's guiding hand. Pray for me in particular as I am more pessimistic by nature than my stalwart bride Joleen.
I had hoped that any journal entries would be a mention of repainting or carpeting or adding a new feature to our home. Boring and perhaps only requiring a quarterly or annual entry. Hopefully over time things will work out in the long term and my journal can be as boring as I anticipated it would be.
What we have learned:
Maintenance costs are not inversely proportional to the cost of the home.
On black land a manufactured home placed on a custom foundation may be the best buy.
Do not purchase a home built during abnormal weather conditions
Piers do nothing to prevent lifting.
Post-tension cables do little to prevent a slab foundation from cracking. The cables keep the broken sections of the slab together.
The best slabs act as a membrane that floats on top of the ground and will exhibit differential movement.
Maintenance and repairs of a slab foundation and the structure built on it are expensive.
Have an engineer do a soil survey and oversee the foundation planning, then overbuild the foundation.
Concrete aprons such as patios and driveways are consumable items on this soil.
Journal Entries
January, 2007 -- For reasons I don't understand and will likely never comprehend The Good Lord decided to catch the North Texas water tables up on rain fall a few months rather than a over a year or two. It began raining in the middle of January.
February, 2007 -- It continued raining in February.
March, 2007 -- Greater than average rain fall continues in March. The water tables are now up and most of us are pretty tired of the almost constant precipitation. The pantry doors no longer line up. Late March I was awakened by a loud snap. A couple of minutes later the sound occurred again. My thoughts were "That sounds like cracking concrete like a slab settling." That morning I noted a crack a cross the grout of the kitchen tile. I observe that the top of the door jam from the breakfast area to the garage is no longer parallel. I am now officially concerned about the amount of rain we are getting in North Texas.
April, 2007 -- The rain continues. We have a few days with clear skies but not many. Lake levels on most area lakes are at or above normal levels. Somehow amongst all the rain I got just over ten pounds of Bermuda seed spread on the property
I note a crack that reaches the about half way across the garage. I begin measuring and conclude the crack in the garage and the crack in the kitchen are the same. We have no cracks in the sheetrock. Praise God. We alert our contractor and begin looking into the Texas state mandated new home warranty.
May, 2007 -- The rain continues. The Texas state mandated new home warranty is a screaming joke and is designed to protect the builder not the home owner. The house pretty much has to be coming apart before the warranty is applicable. I begin calling foundation repair firms to get an estimate of what it will take to halt the damage. The house is lifting off the piers, we are literally floating away. I note cracks in the sheetrock above the windows of the master suite. The patio and driveway apron or now cracked enough that normal winter freezing and ground upheavals will ultimately do enough damage that they will have to be replaced in terms of years rather than decades.
June, 2007 -- The rain continues. I called an engineer to study the situation and recommend a concrete prescription to secure our foundation. I contacted our insurance agent to see if this situation would be covered by our home owners policy. It looks as if we are on our own. The engineer will send a copy of the report to our agent just to be sure. We begin getting cracks in the living room walls and across the ceiling of the garage. By mid-June North Texas has heavy flooding where at least five lives and hundreds of home are lost. We now have a crack down the exterior brick of the east facing wall.
July, 2007 -- North Texas stinks, literally. You walk outside and all smells of stale junior high school locker room. Everywhere is musty, moldy, and stagnant. The flies and mosquitoes are ecstatic and doing quite well, the rest of us however are just wet. I may need to have the yard baled as it has been over a month sense it was dry enough to mow. I keep having "Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day" rattle through my head.
The engineer's report has arrived. The slab only varies a maximum of one inch total which is rather impressive actually considering what North Texas has been through. The engineer advises reconturing the ground around the house and installing gutters for better drainage. We are in a holding pattern as it is too wet to install gutters, reshape the yard, mow the lawn, or much else for that matter. We need it to stop raining.
August, 2007 -- It has stopped the constant raining. Gutters were installed.
September, 2007 -- Flowerbeds have been readied for spring and the Bermuda grass is doing very well.
October, 2007 -- Well in spite of my initial concerns God had been guiding us in our house purchase. Our little house is actually doing quite well compared with most other homes in the area. The foundation is holding steady and no new cracks have appeared. Our utilities are half or better of what our neighbors are. We hear horror stories of major foundation and wall problems from many other home owners.
Structurally the house is very sound. Our builder is going to take care of the what little settling has taken place before the Christmas Season.
Praise The Lord and hats off to our builder, Harold Stephens of Bonham, Texas.
November, 2007 -- We have been living here just under a year and our total utilities excluding phone service are averaging $250 a month.
December, 2007 -- Harold Stephens repaired the cracked tile in the kitchen. The few small cracks that do show up in the sheetrock are easily rectified by a little painters chalk and some paint.
The road in front of our house is the only access for this growing subdivision. It is a sorry poorly maintained stretch of white rock road. Traversing down Tiger Lane is a jostling experience at the posted 20 MPH speed limit. Our Escort, with it's modified suspension and 51 PSI Faulken tires, is even more rattling. Needless to say we travel a bit more slowly at about 15 MPH. We have found that if we travel 10 to 15 MPH down our road the dust is not stirred to an excessive degree. Traveling at the speed limit or greater cause scenes reminiscent of a Sahara sand storm. The biggest issue is that most folk simply do not travel at even the speed limit. The contractors who are building the homes further into our subdivision are the most flagrant violators and clearly lack good driving sense. Joleen has actually seen children playing well into the front yards of their homes hit by projectile rocks from contractor's truck tires and sent crying to into their house. Our almost constant southerly wind causes the white dust from the rock road to cover pretty much everything on our side of the street. Just keeping things clean is an issue.
January, 2008 -- Even during cold snaps our house holds heat well. For several days if has dipped into the teens at night and only gotten into the 30s or 40s during the day. We turn off the heat when we leave for school. The greatest temperature drop during the day has been 6 degrees during two days of strong, biting 25+ MPH northerly winds.
Our "Jacuzzi" tub in the master bath gave up the ghost. Nathaniel had used it a few times and Joleen had perhaps used it twice, no where near enough to justify the additional cost over a traditional tub.. While we are disappointed, we are not surprised as one doesn't need to look at one of those tubs very long to see they are going to be a maintenance headache. The very idea of installing something with as complex a pump and plumbing system as a six jet tub and no access panel to the system is a mystery. The tub came with the home and was not an item we would have ordered. There are some things that would do more damage to fix than to leave be. Like the second bath shower, which is plumbed backwards, we have no plans to fix it.
February, 2008 -- Wiped the cabinets down with sealer as the finish was wearing a little. If one keeps on top of the maintenance the job is not too time consuming.
March, 2008 -- Planted Knockout Roses and Azalias in the flower beds.
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