Today I inspected a 11th month warranty inspection. They called me because they have seen so many issues already with the home, the worst of which is drywall cracks in the corners of interior doorways and difficulty operating those doors due to the racking of the door frames.
In the crawlspace I see what I suspect may be a contributing factor. Stacks of softwood shims and the top shims are sometimes only an inch wide, not 2x6 full size pieces.
I know that for mobile homes, no more than 2" of wood is allowed for shims on top of concrete or CMU piers. Are the rules the same for stick built homes? I’ve been searching for codes and can’t find any limits. Here are some hot pics of the crawl space. Please let me know if you know the limit for shim stack height on stick built residential.
Well that beam is not plum and will be susceptible to rotation. Those are no longer shims, they are piers IMO, and the supports are now posts atop a pier. I think post must be solid minimum 4x4 nominal.
That’s quite a mess for a new house. As an HI with an unhappy/angry buyer (at the builder) I’d be quick to remind them that our purpose is to identify the “what” not the “why”. Of course, we all all dig into the why, how, when, where because we’re curious and it ultimately makes us more educated and better inspectors. But, at the end of the day, your job is done when you show the end performance problem.
@sbridges2 I agree…but I think squash blocks may be a design element determined by the engineer or manufacturer. I need to go down that rabbit hole again. I was telling Bert I had a similar experience as this home. In my opinion squash blocks would have proactively prevented the issue (top and bottom cord of the i-joist had split which is hard to detect)
