Related question on vibration from construction...

Big house going up across the street from my wood frame house and they are pile driving, my poor little house is shaking away.

Should I be concerned?

Robin.

Quote:

My childhood home (not in this region) had a similar issue of its external/facade concrete wall separated from the interior concrete wall. It was a messy affair, and expensive. Essentially, humidity got inside the wall and it slowly separate the external facade concrete layer from the inside wall. If you would tap on it, it would sound hollow. The wall plastering had to be knocked down, the roof sealed properly, and then the wall re-plastered. I am sure doing the same around here would be VERY expensive ordeal with lots of bureaucratic headaches.

A few years ago, I had to fix a bulging brick wall on our three story rowhouse. It was quite an ordeal: engineer, contractors, permits.

Thankfully, it was only the brick facade separating from interior brick wall, so it was a relatively uncomplicated (albeit expensive) fix.

Information on dealing with this sort of situation is a bit hard to come by. If you want more information, feel free to send me a private message and I'll pass along what I learned.

One thing I learned (the hard way) that if the property is a one or two family, it is often cheaper to tear down and build new.

Years ago I planned to put up a building. I sold the lot instead (housing bubble was scaring me) and paid off debt. However, I did contact a company that would put up the frame and sheeting of the building. The three story building would arrive in two tractor trailers and would be assembled onsite. No wood.. everything was going to be steel.

144 Erie was seriously out of plum - it had a large bulge half way up the exterior brick wall (side wall). The new owner rebuilt top half of the exterior wall. And I have seen another on 7th st that did the same thing, but just the top 1/4 of wall.

257 Grove St is also visibly out of plum, and under renovation - not sure what they have done / are doing.

So even IF a structural engineer concludes that the wall is not sound, it can be dealt with. Not sure the cost, but if it is an issue, it should give you some room for price negotiation as many buyers will not go near it (assuming that other interested buyers' inspectors also point it out as an issue).

But as you say, you need that engineer assessment to determine IF it is an issue in first place. I do not have personal experience, but these may be worth checking out as they have been doing work in JC for a long time, though they now do larger projects, so it may be too small of a job:

http://www.inglese-ae.com/

Look at 429.5 Monmouth, it's leaning like crazy. That didn't stop Najjar from renovating it and asking $700k! It's easy to stabilize and stiffen frame structures.

How far does it have to lean to be noticeable to the naked eye? I am not sure whether or not 1.5 feet of lean at the top of a 3 story building looks very crooked or not, it does sound a lot, I agree with you there. My point is that it is possible for a building to be notably not straight to the naked eye and still be structurally sound, but this one may very well not be.

Clearly the original poster needs a professional opinion, the PE I used is a larger company tied to an architect, so I can't recommend them, but there are plenty of structural engineers around who you engage directly on this type of work, hopefully someone else will come through with a recommendation.

When doing a home inspection on an old house you should get the inspection done by a PE in the first place, rather than someone who is just a home inspector.

Robin.

I think sagging floors is WAY different than leaning! 2" for 4 feet sounds crazy to this person. that's like 3x more out of plumb than the sag of my floors, 2.5" over 12', and here can look like funhouse sometimes.

so if it's 36 ft high it's leaning 18" over? The place opposite the Music Box on 7th was like that and vacant for well over a decade before they demolished it this year. I hope you have a big wallet and even bigger stones.

I don't have the name of a engineer to recommend, but surely this John Moss guy who inspected has given you his verdict, or is he not a PE?

I bought a wonky frame house downtown, in general they can lean more than a layman might think and still be fine, as discussed on another thread recently, you rarely try to push them back up, instead ensure the footings and foundations are sound and add support where necessary.

If it's not frame, but brick and leaning then you have a bigger problem.

Robin.

Downtown Jersey City is a former swamp and floodplain.


There is a long history of buildings falling over, collapsing and killing people. Save yourself a fortune, headaches, and possibly your life and buy something structurally sound.

Hi all, first time posting.

I'm looking at buying a house in downtown JC and the home inspection today revealed that the outside walls of the house are not plumb (leaning 2 inches for every 4 feet).

Can anyone recommend a structural engineer that can do a further inspection?

Also, I'm curious if anyone else has ran into this issue when buying an old house?

I actually hired John H Moss to do the inspection based on the recommendations on this forum.