If you're tired of your basement feeling like a swimming pool or your crawlspace doubling as a water park, then you're in the right place! Eric G and John Dudley are diving deep into how to keep that dampness at bay and tackle leaks, especially if you've got one of those slab-on-grade foundations. We all know that a little water is fine for your garden, but in your home? Not so much. So, whether you're dealing with pesky leaks or just wanting to ensure your home stays bone dry, these two pros have got your back. Get ready for some solid tips, a sprinkle of sarcasm, and maybe a story or two about the absurdity of contractors trying to scare you into shelling out cash for unnecessary fixes. Let’s get into it! Flooded basements and damp crawlspaces can turn your home sweet home into a scene from a horror movie. Eric G and John Dudley dive deep into the murky waters of home maintenance in this episode, tackling the nitty-gritty of keeping those underground spaces dry. They kick things off by sharing their personal horror stories of overpriced contractors who prey on unsuspecting homeowners, quoting astronomical sums to fix what could be simple fixes. If you’ve ever felt like you were about to be robbed while trying to get your leaky basement sorted, you’ll resonate with their tales. They emphasize the importance of understanding the real cause of leaks, from poor drainage systems to improperly placed downspouts, and how a little bit of DIY knowledge can save you a boatload of cash. By the end, you’ll be armed with tips on how to assess your own home’s vulnerabilities, and you might even find yourself chuckling at the absurdity of the whole situation. In addition to tackling the common woes of basement water issues, Eric and John also explore the often-overlooked slab-on-grade foundations. For those in warmer climates where this type of construction is prevalent, the duo goes into detail about how to detect and handle leaks that can occur beneath the concrete. With a mix of humor and practical advice, they guide listeners through steps to identify potential issues before they become full-blown disasters. They offer insights on the latest technologies and methods for leak detection, ensuring that you’ll be well-prepared should you face any plumbing nightmares in your slab home. So whether you’re a seasoned homeowner or just diving into the world of home maintenance, this episode is packed with valuable nuggets to keep your house dry and your wallet happy!

Takeaways:

1. Keep your basement and crawlspace water-free by diverting downspouts at least 12 feet away from the foundation, because, let's be honest, water is not your home's best friend.
2. If you discover a leak under a slab on grade foundation, don't panic! Call in a pro with leak detection equipment instead of turning your home into a DIY water park.
3. Fixing a leaky basement isn't just about slapping on some paint—proper waterproofing requires strategic drainage solutions and a little bit of know-how, or you might as well just buy a canoe.
4. When shopping for waterproofing solutions, watch out for contractors who quote you a fortune; often, a simple fix is hiding behind a downspout or a crack you can tackle yourself.
5. In the unfortunate event of a serious foundation crack, implementing carbon fiber repairs can be a game-changer—stronger than steel and less invasive than traditional methods.
6. For those with slab on grade foundations, be aware that plumbing leaks can be sneaky; proactive monitoring and using the right leak detection tools can save you from costly repairs later.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. aroundthehouseonline.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Costco
2. Mattress Warehouse USA
3. Pioneer Masonry
4. Rhino Carbon Fiber

Thanks for listening to Around the house if you want to hear more please subscribe so you get notified of the latest episode as it posts at https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/listen

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Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

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Host Serig G. And John Dudley have got you covered with the best advice and information about your home.

Now let's get this hour started.

Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

Hey, Johnny, how you doing, brother?

Brother, another day.

Good to see you, man.

For all you new people out there tuning to the show, I'm Eric G. Thanks for catching us today.

Whether you're on the radio or the podcast, YouTube, wherever else, we appreciate you.

Today.

I wanted to talk about a couple different things.

One brother I was out and I did the dreaded mattress shopping this weekend because I'm coming up for surgery.

We'll talk about next week.

Now that that got bumped, but I was like this bed that we had was, I don't know, three year old kind of mattress, three five year old mattress.

It was a kind of this sort of hybrid thing.

And yeah, it didn't do well.

It was coils and foam.

The foam was splitting apart.

So you're getting these like little holes between the coils.

And it was like this thing's not making it.

The first thing I did is I go down to Costco and go, okay, because my bigger, better bed is in storage.

When we move, that's going to go there.

But it's, I don't want to get something expensive because.

Did you go out in the US now and spend 10 grand on a match?

Yeah, I know it's crazy.

You know, I still think that mattress stores across the US Are some kind of, some kind of money laundering front because they seem to be everywhere and you never see anybody in them.

It's one of those things you go, is that even really a mattress door?

But makes you wonder sometimes.

I got something for the Y files.

We'll have to get that over to that.

Seriously.

Because.

Yeah, I was gonna say it before you said it, but yeah, you're.

But I, I have a really cool.

These guys down the street over here, over, across the bridge.

Not down the street, but they're in the neighborhood.

And Mattress Warehouse usa, these guys, they don't pay me a bit.

But what I like about them, you can envision this place.

I think it was the first VW Bug dealership in Portland, Oregon.

Sweet so it's a.

There's pictures in the wall of all these little cool little 60s, 50s or whatever year that was VW Bugs.

In the showroom out front, they had service bays.

There's three or four service bays in the back.

That's the mattress factory.

So they build them right there, which is cool.

So they're built right there.

So it's made in usa, which I like.

And I went in there and got what would have been a five thousand dollar mattress at one of those big stores for under nine hundred bucks.

Wow.

Nice.

Which is nice.

And yeah, I could have gone to Costco and got one of the purples or one of those things, whatever.

They got the rule out foam ones.

But I got something that's super dialed in.

It's healthy in that it has all the right ratings for not having the chemicals and stuff in them.

And there's a cotton pad top on top.

So pretty healthy.

It doesn't smell.

Some of those things, you open them.

Up and you're like, yeah, like a roll of carpet.

Like a roll of carpet.

It's wow.

When they're packed full of us stuff, fiberglass, they've got all this stuff in them.

I'm like, yeah, I don't need to be, dude.

When I was, what was I like?

I don't know, 17, 18, something like that.

And I worked for express temporary service.

And I actually, I remember I actually worked for a week in a mattress factory.

But.

But no, I didn't.

I would go in at night and clean up all the scraps and sweep.

It was the coolest thing ever, man.

I just cranked the music, dance around with the broom handle like I was.

It's ridiculous.

Nice.

But just, yeah, tons of crazy materials everywhere.

And yeah, I was just cleanup guy, but nice.

What I like about that place is you walk in there, dude, and if there, if you.

If I was in there on a Sunday and they didn't have it, they'd go, oh yeah, but just pop that off the production line in the morning.

We'll get it to you.

About.

How's noon look tomorrow?

Nice.

That's awesome.

But they had one on the shelf, so I picked it out.

It was a killer deal.

He hooked me up in there.

I love those guys in there.

There's no sales pressure.

You just walk in and go.

And they've got like 20 mattresses there kind of lined up good, better, best.

And just go lay on them and find something that's cool, that simple.

And I love it for that.

So you can get in There, get you done, get you out the door.

Simple.

Had a mattress to sleep on last night and I needed to because, man, I got.

I'm gonna be sleeping in a sling now with that.

So if you haven't heard, guys, I get.

Coming up on shoulder surgery here.

What's going to be next?

Middle of next week.

So I got that dialed in.

And so I'm going to be walking around in a sling, including sleeping in bed with one.

So I. I'm like, I got to be comfortable.

I got to be comfortable.

It's one of those things that's darn expensive to go get mattresses.

But I was sure wasn't going to spend ten grand on one.

If.

If you want it, that's cool.

And I do the adjustable beds and that kind of stuff.

That's cool.

But it's just.

We'll talk more about it.

I was talking with Caroline Blazowski.

We'll have her on here, and I'm sure we'll get into a debate on what's healthy, because her level of healthy is well beyond what my level of healthy is yet.

I'm excited for that band.

I'm excited for that band.

Oh, yeah.

It'll be a good one.

It'll be a good one.

I guess I'm just a little bit more practical when it comes to that.

We're dudes.

We're dudes.

We'll figure it out.

We'll figure it out.

I've slept under peers.

Okay.

So the mattress might be a little unhealthy, might not be.

Seventy thousand dollar horse hair doesn't hurt my back.

So I'm good.

Yeah, I'm pretty simple when it comes to that.

When it comes to that stuff.

And that's it.

And my shoulder.

And just to give you a quick update on that, I got a torn rotator cuff, torn bicep, a bunch of different stuff on that left arm.

So I'm gonna be down for a bit.

So you doing DIY projects, whether you're a contractor, homeowner, whatever.

Be careful.

One of those things, I think it was my ceiling project.

Putting the cedar ceiling up.

That jumped the shark and pushed it from that sore to.

We need to go mechanically fix it.

Yeah, man.

My.

Yeah, my overhead shoulder capacity went out at about 30, I don't know, 6.

About 36.

I was like, no, no, I don't like this.

That hurts.

Yeah.

But you could still hold a Fender Stratocaster over your head.

Sure.

But that's quite different than a 4 by 8, 58 sheet of drywall, 4.

By 12 shot drywall over your head.

Yeah, that's not me either.

That's not me either.

So anyway, keep it safe out there, guys.

Keep it safe.

Now I wanted to talk this hour.

We had our water damage guys in before, but I really wanted to talk about this.

How to prevent those flooded basements, crawl spaces and even water underneath slab on grade foundations, man.

Because I tell you what, there are some contractors out there in what I would call the basement waterproofing guys.

There are great ones and there are ones out there that use fear to take money from you.

Truth.

And I have great story before we go out to break and this is why I want to talk about this.

I was working with a company here in Portland years ago and their competitor was in the house.

Obviously two, two and a half hours I was there for my 3 o' clock meeting with these folks and I waited till 3:20 for the dude to leave because I wasn't going to go up, knock on the door.

I thought about it, but I wanted to come up and go, hey, I'm next time's done, get out.

He gave these cats like a $35,000 quote to stop the water from coming in the basement.

And I walk in the door, I walk up to the door and I look down and I go, wow, there's a crack in the this.

Okay, so set the stage a little bit on this.

This is your California split entry kind of house where you walk in the front door and you can go up to the right of the left upstairs and then the stairs goes downstairs.

You're mid level in that between the upstairs and downstairs.

So those California splits.

So I'm walking up and I see this crack out of the basement window going down and there's a sprinkler head right next to it.

I'm like, bet that's where the water's coming through.

So I walk in, I walk down in the basement.

Cool 70s feel to this house.

And long story short, there's asbestos 9 by 9 tiles on the floor.

You know, you could see where.

And I'm like, hey man, he's.

My wife's upstairs, she needs a minute because oh my gosh, she was crying because he said, hey, yeah, you've got a big problem.

It's going to cost you all this money, 35 grand or something to fix it.

And I looked at, I go, let's start over.

First off, what's with the floor here?

They said we're going to do a below grade waterproofing system with French drain And sump pump.

I go, did he count the asbestos removal in here?

No.

Yeah.

So we started getting into that, and I went, hey, man, I think I see where your problem is.

It's over in the same area.

Can I get a.

Can I poke just a little tiny hole in this wall?

He's, yeah, whatever.

So it's drywall.

So I just poked my inspection camera through there.

You know those little snake inspection cameras through there.

And I could see where the water was coming in.

That's where the leak was.

So I quoted him 2, 500 bucks to fix that because we had to tear the drywall out and do some repair on it.

But he was going to be in that 60 grand by the time he had the asbestos and everything else in that.

And I fixed it without messing with the floor.

Those people were just gonna get taken.

And a lot of people did.

That became such a big pitch for, I don't know, when it was early 90s, right, when suddenly everybody's got a trench out their basement for 12 inches around the entire basement, put in the skirt drains and the.

And the sump pump, and that's the only way you're going to stop water from coming in this basement.

But, yeah, that was a big deal.

So, John, we come back.

Let's talk about that.

We got a round to break.

Let's talk about that when we come back.

Because there is so much we can do to save you money on this.

We'll do that just as soon as around the House returns.

Don't change that dial.

But kids these days will never understand what it's like to play an instrument and being a friend.

What's up?

This is Sticks It Inia and Satchel.

From Steel Panther, and you are listening.

To around the House with Eric G. Yeah, we love Eric G. And you should, too.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

I'm Eric G. If you guys want to find out more about us, head to our website.

We got a ton of stuff over there aroundthe house online.com and you can reach us over there.

If there's a subject you want us to hit, make sure and give us a shout over there and we'll try to put it up in an upcoming episode.

Johnny, we were talking, we went to break about, you know, people getting taken on incorrect bids.

And one of the other things I see out there when it comes to basement waterproofing, whether it's a crawl space or anything, like that.

And for you guys out there that are like in Arizona with the slab on grade down in the desert.

We're going to talk to you in a second on this subject.

But most of the time like 75% I would say many times the water problem is not just like a crack like that many times it's because you've got those downspouts coming out of your gutter system, dropping down right next to the foundation.

They put in those little 18 inch diverter, little ramps that come out and it drops right into the ground right there.

And when you get an inch of rain out there, all of a sudden you've got 60 gallons of water point dropped right within a foot of the foundation.

And then you wonder why that's coming in.

Water is always going to go to the low point and you got a swimming pool there with a concrete floor and walls in it that it's just begging to have in there.

Yeah, so many times you can fix that just by dealing with that and getting it underground and what I mean by that, and I'm sure Johnny, you've done this a bunch of times, but you want that to go underground.

So dig down, let that drop into the storm drain system you're going to create.

And you need to get that at least 12ft away from the house and either daylighting down towards the driveway, whatever is low, or going into some kind of a French drain system that's even farther away from the house.

Because if you can divert that point load of water away many times you can solve those water issues right off the bat.

Now look, there's a real simple way too.

If you want to just be cheap and quick about it.

Buy a bunch of that black corrugated.

Yeah, that works too.

And just funnel it out to the neighbor's yard or something.

I didn't say that, did I?

I love it.

Here's one thing, it's really interesting and even in, in my metropolitan area, we deal with things so differently.

Like I was in a house out on the outside of town and that was a newer development and they had all these, all these drains going right out to the street.

And then the street had its own storm drain system, which was awesome.

So that just took it right up to the street, which was great.

Mine there, that was all plugged up underneath that, that was a crawl space.

All the roots had gone in there and plugged it up so I couldn't get the roots out of there.

And we talked about it a few weeks ago, actually hooked a chain up to them and pulled Them out of the pipe and drug it right out to the curb and pulled out dozens feet of roots out of that thing.

Boy, flowed really well after there, other places like cities like the city of Portland here, we've talked about this before too, but they turned around, and when they built it in the 20s, 30s, 40s, when they put the sewer system in, it was the storm drain and the sewer system.

So it's all comb fine.

So every time we get a big storm that all overflows sewage and all goes right out to the right out into the river.

This.

Yeah, not good.

Not good.

Yeah.

Of course, then what happens is the city of Portland went, oh, my gosh, we got to get rid of that system.

It's overloading it.

So they paid people to.

To disconnect those and gave them a tax break.

Here's the one little secret, too, guys.

Yeah, I've seen even worse.

In the northwest, we had all the clay piping, remember?

My gosh, I hate that stuff.

So think of it as ceramic tile clay, you know, basically just clay pipes holding it together.

Just think of it as broken, and you have to replace it Pretty much every house you buy.

Just think of it as that.

Like it's a given, like it's broke somewhere.

It's broke.

Now, once you get that done, there's a way to.

The common problem we saw out there, and you've seen it too, Johnny.

People go around, they dig away the entire dirt away from the foundation wall on the outside of the house.

They dig out a trench 24, 30 inches wide, dig around it all the way down to the footing, and then they put in that sump, exterior drain tile, and get all the waterproofing done that way, which works, but you can do this from the inside without having to dig everything up.

And so what you do, if you've got a crack, let's say that's in there, this does not work from the dry joint between the wall and the slab for the floor, you can't really do anything with that.

That's just a high water table.

That's a whole other issue.

But if you've got a crack leaking, what they'll do, a foundation company will come in.

And if you're really good on the handy side of things, you can do this yourself.

But what they do is they come in, clean out that crack, you get the Chisel out, you clean it all out.

Get it all cleaned up.

Watch your silica dust on that.

Make sure you're not inhaling that stuff because that's toxic injection.

Yeah.

And so you clean that out.

Then you hit it with cementol, which is a product of repair, high strength repair concrete.

That goes in there.

It's a high psi, so it'll actually patch that really, if you follow the directions.

Then you drill into that and you pump in this stuff that's like warm honey and it's urethane.

So you pump that into that.

Once it hits moisture, it expands out like foam and fills all the voids down there.

So it's almost when you'd see people on YouTube taking aluminum or steel and pouring it down on the ant in the ant holes.

And it fills up and makes the whole art out of the ant pile.

Right.

This goes in and fills it with foam.

So it really waterproofs it.

So you can do that for pennies on the dollar compared to digging up around the house.

We had a ton of products when I worked at Pioneer masonry again early 90s, but we do a lot of times and this on big commercial stuff.

Microsoft buildings and parking garages and things like that are 30ft below grade.

Whether it was epoxy injection drive, it used to make a really good product that would seal some of that stuff up.

But you know, inevitably, water is the most powerful insidious element there is.

Like it will find a way is.

Man, we plug that one now it's coming over there.

You just.

It's almost impossible to seal water from the wrong side.

Like you.

You've got to stop it from coming in.

It's almost impossible to stop it.

Yeah, it's tough from the other side.

Just go in there and paint some waterproof coating on the inside that says it's going to stop moisture.

No, it's not.

All the coatings get pushed off as soon as you get in there like that.

So that's the nice thing with drilling in because you're actually putting that on the other side of the wall.

Right.

So that.

That way it's pushed in.

That's what we did with the epoxy injections.

Very similar.

Yeah.

And the epoxy works well.

And when we come back in a minute, I want to talk about that because I've done some of my own repairs with that.

And I got a funny story for that one where I repaired my own foundation at my last house.

But today with epoxy and carbon fiber, you can put.

They use that now to fix bridges that were damaged and stuff like that.

So it's really good.

You can actually repair a foundation, wrapping it with some epoxy and carbon fiber around there and it's stronger than the concrete next to it and.

Yeah, makes sense.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a cool product for that.

And then you can go through and after it's done, paint it gray to make it look like it's.

It's looking good and it's not standing out like a somebody's little Honda Prelude carbon fiber hood that's running around.

You want it to look right.

But I've got one that we did though.

I want to do that when we come back, when we talk, we'll talk about that because this is one that man, I have seen some horrible foundations.

And after that we're going to talk as well about below grade leaks on slabs.

And that gets bad because if you've got that slab on grade foundation and they ran the water pipes through it, you got a leak.

How do you find that?

Right?

Brutal, dude.

Yeah.

I lived in Arizona.

I know what that's like.

You know what it's like.

We'll do that just as soon as around the House returns.

To find out more about us, head over to aroundthehouse online dot com.

We will be right back.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today, man.

Johnny, we've been talking about just trying to keep moisture out of the basement crawl space.

I thought real quick let's talk about those slab on grade foundations because there's a lot of people out there in the southern states that have this.

It's a preferred way of building in Arizona where you used to live for a while.

Yeah.

And I tell you what, it's been wild watching a buddy's house a few years ago in Phoenix.

How they build houses down there.

It is way different than many other places in the U.S. this was just scrub desert.

They had gone through there, graded the place out with a grater, put the streets in and then guys showed up and put forms on there and just poured right over the dirt.

Yep, that's what they did.

Right over the dirt.

It's hard pan.

They're like that.

Good enough.

The throw some steel in there.

Good to go.

Oh, but if you watch any of these new home inspectors out there that are in Phoenix right now and there's a couple of them like sigh.

I watch on their size home inspections the stuff he finds that they get away with down there and Building that's against building code.

But the inspectors just don't catch.

Yeah.

Is shocking.

Yeah.

And the bad part is they're running the pipes and the plumbing down in there.

So all your water lines are down there.

And so you're stuck if you break a water line underneath there, because one.

That hard pan is going to push the water someplace else.

That hard pan doesn't like to soak it up.

So it's going to push up maybe even through the concrete.

I have seen homes where you'll have a sewer line break and it starts popping up in a crack in the bedroom two doors down in the house.

Yeah.

It's brutal.

And when you get the monsoons down there, that's why this.

It'll rain an hour.

And you can't drive because, you know there's water, you know, in a dip in the road and it's 3ft, 4ft deep all of a sudden in.

In 30 minutes.

Because that water is not going anywhere.

It's not soaking in that dead pan real quick or.

Yeah, it's just.

It's like a pool liner.

Yeah.

It's.

Water does not like to soak into the desert.

No.

And I was shocked because I was down there for modernism week one year and in Palm Springs and cruised in there.

We took.

It took us five different ways to get into Palm Springs off the freeway because we had to go all the way out the other side, like towards Indio and come in that way because the main roads in had five feet of water over them and a rushing Class 4 rapids going through there.

Yeah.

I was like, holy smokes.

Yeah.

And it happens.

It's flash boom.

Like it happens in an hour.

It happened so quick, they didn't even block the road up.

We pull up and there's four cars ahead of us and there's 200 yards across to the other side where I can see pavement and there's five to seven feet of water running through there at 40 miles an hour ahead of you.

And you're like, yeah, no, there's no way.

There's no way.

And there's always.

For brainiacs that think they're going to try to drive through it as well.

We were driving by the mall in Palm Springs and we actually think, thankfully it was a rental, but we had this.

There's seven of us or something, that we were driving a Lincoln Navigator and we ruined the automatic steps that come down because we had them underwater too long driving on the street because we were driving around in five inches of water in the Middle of a four lane road.

Yeah.

And so it was wild.

But insurance covered it, so that was fine.

But.

Woo, buddy.

Yeah, it's fun.

Yeah.

It's exciting when it happens.

Actually.

I liked it.

I like the monsoons and I like the floods and the.

This.

It's kind of like when you get a big snow in the northwest.

It's not enough.

Changes everything up.

It's exciting.

Oh, we're sure not getting that up this year with us.

We've.

If we get lucky, we'll get some snow.

But we still have ski areas up on Mount Hood that if you go to the ski cameras that, that dude everywhere have.

No.

My little brother sent me photos the other day.

Places in Utah, everywhere it's just dirt.

You're like, what the.

Yeah.

At the Cannon Beach.

Cannon Beach Hardware, they call it the brewing screw because it's a bar, restaurant and hardware store all at the same place.

And I was watching Seahawks game out there and I tell you what, same kind of thing out there.

It was 61 degrees.

I'm walking the beach with a T shirt on.

And January in the Pacific Northwest on the coast, which is.

That's warmer than some July's.

Yep.

Yeah.

So pretty crazy.

Pretty crazy.

So you guys out there, the best way to deal with those leaks, that's when you need to hire the plumber that's got the leak detection equipment to come in and they've got tools where they actually listen.

The tool actually listens to the water line and then it listens for the noises of that through the concrete.

So it's actually a leak detection tool.

You just need to bring in the right company.

Yeah.

Gonna be expensive.

But that's really the only way to do it.

Otherwise you're gonna be paying somebody to just run water around it and you're tearing up drywall that way.

This is gonna be the best way to do it.

Yeah.

You're probably gonna have to replace a floor someplace, but it's gonna get you.

So.

Yeah.

And everything's tile there as well.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's where you want to keep those extra five boxes of tile up in the back of the garage for when you have to fix that stuff.

I would, I would, I would wager to say that 90 in the Phoenix area are Saltillo tile.

So it's never a problem.

A, to match it.

B, to find it.

Like it's already all different colors.

It's.

It's not a bad idea.

Yeah.

Just go in there and you have a mismatch of all these colors and that way if you have to replace it, you can just.

Yep.

Create a random pattern.

I like it.

I like it.

That works, man.

So really, when it comes down to foundation repairs, I want to talk about this before we run out of time, but when you've got that structural problem, I've gone into basements where there's a big tree next to the house.

There was one that I was at where there was this big sequoia tree, giant sequoia in the yard.

That brick foundation was 15 degrees off.

Yeah.

And I'm like, ooh, I'm not getting close.

In those situations.

Yeah, you can use carbon fiber.

But when that one was brick, so that was the best way to do that one.

We actually poured a new interior foundation.

Have you ever seen that done?

Nah.

Yeah.

Inside the.

Yeah, yeah.

So you take everything off the walls, you take.

Take everything back in and you just basically put in another 6 inch foundation on the inside of that.

And so you bring it down so you can still frame up and tie into it so you can get the concrete in there, pump it in.

But you lose a foot around of square footage around there because there's six inches on each side.

But I tell you what, you can still keep the actual heritage look of the brick on the outside of the foundation.

Pour it on the inside, and now that's a sacrificial lamb on the outside.

But you can do that.

Tie it in and you're good to go.

And that's the extreme way to do it.

But that's the way to do it without jacking the house up and causing all the problems with that.

You used to see when they'd go up.

New foundation time, get the house mover in, lift the house up, destroy the fireplace.

You know how that stuff goes.

That's the non evasive way to do it.

Yeah.

I remember I had the second story of the carriage house up in the air on a couple of beams.

Jacked that whole thing up and we poured a foundation under it and lowered her back down.

That was really.

Yeah, it was, it was dangerous.

Let's just say that.

I can imagine.

But you know me, man, I wouldn't do it any other way.

I'm like, no, man, we're just.

Now come on, we'll cut these out, jack that thing up.

Just nobody breathe for two days while we poured the foundation.

Were you like using automotive floor jacks or do you have the actual foundation jacks?

We had just those 12 ton jacks, bottle jacks that you buy at Home Depot.

Yep.

Jack up one in, put a post, run a beam across, jack up the other side, and then cut out all the two by fours underneath it so it literally was just floating in air.

The second story.

And then poured the foundation, built the new walls underneath it, lowered it on top of that.

Bam.

Man.

I had neighbors looking at me.

I had a house up in Everett, Washington at one point and the garage was listing by about 10 degrees.

I was like 3 inches off at the top.

So I was re reciting the outside because it just taken a beating.

Nobody put paint on it forever.

So I took off the the sheeting on the end walls and then I just pulled my truck up to it and then used the come along.

Yep.

And then just drunk off the hitch.

It's just wooden nails, man.

You make it do it.

You make it do what you want.

Yeah.

Threw my shear walls up with plywood and I was good to go.

And it stayed.

So sometimes you just gotta force it.

That's the creativity of building stuff and construction in general.

Like, I love that kind of crazy stuff.

You're like, you're gonna do what?

I mean, you saw that place on South 8th, man, that was just.

But that's the fun of it.

You take out the heritage tree that was growing out through the roof, though.

I had to.

I had one of those at the beach house too.

Now, brother, when we come back, let's wrap this up.

And I also want to talk a little bit about, before we go, about your new project you've been working on.

And this is something that's going to make life easier for contractors, homeowners, everything else out there.

And I can't wait about to talk talk with you about that.

The last bit of the show.

So we'll do that just as soon as around the House returns.

Don't change that tile.

All right.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

If you want to find out more about us, head over to our website@aroundthehousonline.com we'd love to hear from you over there, where you can follow any one of our social media pages out there.

We've got them on Instagram, Facebook.

Make sure you check out the YouTube, all that stuff and you can find out a ton of information there.

Johnny, We've been talking about foundation repair and I wanted to talk a little bit about this last subject of it, which was using carbon fiber to repair stuff.

And this is something I don't know if you saw in the news a year or two ago, I can't remember.

I'm not living in Seattle anymore.

But they had the West Seattle bridge closed down because of concrete failure in that bridge.

And it was shut down, I think, for a year or two.

Really?

Yeah.

Which.

Can you imagine that?

No.

Seattle bridge shut down.

What disaster that was there?

So what, you had to drive around?

You had to drive around?

Yeah.

Dude, that's insane.

Yeah, so they spent a couple of years doing it, but they came in there with carbon fiber.

You'll go by and maybe you see an old bridge and you'll see the poster, that big piling underneath that's cracked and crumbling.

Now what they can do is they'll come in there, they'll patch that up, and then they take high strength epoxy and they'll wrap carbon fiber around it and embed it with that epoxy.

And it's actually stronger than steel and it's stronger than the concrete that they're putting together.

So super strong.

And you can do that with the foundation your home.

You can have somebody come do it for you.

There's ways that you can jump online and get it from, like, rhino carbon fiber.

But before you do too much of that stuff, and I just want to give this caveat to people out there.

If this is going to be a DIY concrete repair, go talk to a structural engineer, have them spec out the way you need to do it.

Yeah.

Because you don't want to mess.

Even the products work.

Well, there's a couple different types of carbon fiber.

There's carbon fiber that has strength one way.

Let's say it's left, but there's not a lot of strength.

No.

Up and down, for instance.

Then there's unidirectional stuff where it's up and down and, you know, left to right.

So you need to make sure that you spec the right material for that.

And what I do on those kind of things, it's just best to have a structural engineer come out, look at it and go, yeah, you could save it.

And you go, hey, I want to use this carbon fiber.

They'll write it out.

So later on down the road, let's say you go sell your house.

People go, hey, what's with this repair down here?

Here's my structural engineer.

They said it's good.

They signed off on it.

And you know something?

You're good to go.

Yeah, yeah.

That's important.

That's.

Yeah.

It's not something you want to do Wrong.

It's just not.

It's too expensive, first of all, to do wrong.

And second of all, it's too important to the entire home.

And like you said, when it comes to reselling, so any kind of certification on that saying, yes, this was done right.

Product specs and all that stuff were followed, blah, blah, blah.

It's super important.

It's just a smart step and reduces that liability when you go, hey, look, we did it right.

And that's important.

The other thing too is if you have.

There's that cold joint.

So what they do when they're building a house or the basement or even a crawl space, but with a basement, they'll put the walls up.

Right.

They'll put the foundation walls up, then they come back and pour that concrete later.

That's the floor.

Yeah.

After they strip the forms away and after they put in whatever utilities and plumbing or whatever underneath.

Their problem is that coin cold joint likes to leak.

If you have a high water table.

And the only way to really fix that is you're not going to put a caulking in there.

You're not going to do anything that's good.

It's just going to shove it out of there.

It's not going to work.

So really the only way to fix that is to go around and you take a concrete saw, cut around the perimeter of the foundation, take up that slab, dig down, put in a.

Basically a French drain system with a sump pump underneath that.

Yep.

That's what we were talking about earlier, like in the 90s.

Seems like it was early 90s when, like, finally we realized, okay, here's the best way to fix that.

And I saw so many basements in the Northwest that had to do that.

But at least the problem got solved versus people caulking and painting.

17 coats of goop on there and it's still running.

Yeah.

Never going to stop it.

And be careful, too, because here's one thing I've noticed.

There are some foundations out there where they've got cracks in the corners or something like that in them.

That bottom floor, or what you'd call the concrete floor in that kind of is a key way.

And it's holding the base of those walls out if there's cracks in it.

Or even a daylight basement where there's not a lot of structure there.

So you need to be really careful when you take that out to do that underneath there.

Because I wouldn't go take it all out of there if you've got a heavy wet soil load on the Outside.

Might want to have the engineer take a peek at that too because yeah.

Sometimes you want to put that in there somehow.

What I've done with that, Johnny, it works well, is what they do ab sections.

So what you do is you cut out like three feet, leave two feet, cut out three feet, leave two feet and you can dig under it.

Yeah, yeah.

That makes you patch it.

It's still holding the wall out there, but at least you can get underneath it and get the drain tile down there and fill it back up with gravel and get it put back together.

Fun, right?

You don't miss that a bit, do you?

I don't know.

It's a lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun, but it does solve that.

Water in the basement, man, I tell you what, I've seen so many.

That's one of my biggest.

Buyer bewares is jumping into a basement that's got a brand new recent renovation in it.

Or they added, they finished the basement and you're buying the house.

It's like, oh, this could have been done so badly.

Hey man, before we jump out of time here on this, I wanted to talk about what you've been working on the last six months cranking around with your new bidding project.

This guy's is something cool.

And Johnny's been building this with his site hype design team.

And this is so cool.

It's an insta bid type product that you can put on a website and it's going to price out projects for you.

Yeah, it's it.

I think it serves both not just the contractor, but for me, I'm a guy that likes to see a price.

Right.

I'm just that way.

I don't if there's a website like oh, call for price.

I'm not calling, I'm not doing anything.

Tell me how much it is.

I want to know now that's my own impatience.

But this way, this tool and yeah, it's pretty intense, man.

It's.

I won't get into techy details of it, but hey, if you're a contractor, people go to your website and they go, I want my house resided.

It's X square foot.

With this type of siding, this is the shape it's in.

Now they can attach some photos up there so you can take a look at it.

You'll get a Google view of the house.

You can actually see access and what kind of shape it's in.

It'll price all that out for them.

The client gets an immediate number.

You get a print off PDF Downloadable.

You instantly get an email, price it all out for you.

It tells you scope of work.

Meanwhile, you, the contractor, you're at work while this is happening and you just got a bid out that you didn't have to write, you didn't have to send, you didn't have to.

Nothing.

It's serving both parties.

I want to know what's this guy think he's going to charge me for a roof.

Bam, There's a number in literally 30 seconds and the contractor gets notified, hey, you just got a lead for $15,000 roof.

Follow it up or check it out or blah, blah, blah.

That's cool.

That's the long and the short of it.

But yeah, it does a lot of things for the.

On the contractor side of things, it.

It does all your lead tracking.

It's got an estimate tracker.

It's got.

You can adjust your pricings, you can.

Everything's priced out by material.

Gives you an immediate material list.

You're going to need 26 sheets of OSB that's going to cost X at going market rate.

You're going to need 15 rolls, a cap sheet, whatever you're doing.

And you can just print off a CSV.

Send your guy to Home Depot with that list.

Buy the stuff you need, send to the job.

Go.

Man, that is cool.

Because I tell you what, there's nothing more embarrassing and frustrating for a homeowner that says, fine, come out and give me an estimate.

So guy comes out, you took half a day off of work for them to come out, walk around, and you thought it was a $10,000 project, but the roofing guy says it's a 50,000 pro, $50,000 project because it's a big roof and there's nothing more.

Embarra the homeowner going, oh, yeah, that's way out of my budget.

I can't even afford to do that.

I got to figure out if I get a loan or whatever else.

Yeah.

And the contractor, coming from your point of view, you're like, man, I just spent two hours out of my day to do this, and that's not even given the numbers.

Maybe you got seven hours into it by the time you got all the material pricing and got it back and you had to take drive across town, whatever, and you got nothing out of that time that you did.

So I think it's a win for homeowners and a win for contractors both.

Because everybody's busy, man, and it's saving everybody time.

Like, how much gas and time are you saving as a contractor?

And you don't have to write out the estimate.

You don't have to sit there and send emails at night.

You can spend time with your family.

You don't have to drive around.

You don't have to leave the job you're on trying to get done because you're on the deadline.

Like from experience, I lost a lot of jobs knowingly because I would procrastinate either A going to look at the job or B even typing up the estimate for them because I knew it was four hours of my time to run the material costs and run the labor costs and write up a scope of work that was accurate to the project itself.

And this is all done.

Email sent in 1 minute and you stayed on the job.

You didn't have to do any.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And the cool thing, Johnny too is that really to do that, I mean it's really for the contractor that goes, I want control.

Awesome.

Call it a budget estimate.

But you're still going to get people and then you go out and inspect the job site and get the numbers pure for what you want.

Absolutely.

No, I don't care if you're spending $5,000 a month on the best of these things out there.

Not is going to nail every job.

If you're in construction, every job is its own animal.

What this does is it ballparks it.

It's an estimate, it's not a proposal.

And you can put your little disclaimer that says within 15% of X numbers and you have a back end as the contractor where you can adjust your rate.

If you know you get roofing for X a bundle, you can put that price in there.

It's all adjustable.

You're going to start creating historical data and it automatically adjusts your rates.

Right.

So it's keeping you go, look, I want to make X to cover overhead and expenses and X profit.

You put that in there, matches it with your historical estimates and figures and it will start balancing it out for you and tell you, hey, you better charge X because you're losing your butt on this one.

Exactly, Johnny.

We're running out of time.

But if you guys want to, if you're a contractor out there and want to play around with this, reach out to us.

Just head over to our website, send me a message over there to Johnny and I will get you lined up and just do that at aroundthe house online.comJohnny Great to talk to you about this one today, man.

This has been a lot of fun and man, it's been fun watching you work on this project.

Yeah, I wish I could say the same.

I know.

It's good to see you, though.

And you can get some sleep now, at least.

So.

Yeah, man.

Yeah, it's definitely getting better.

Exactly, brother.

All right, guys, For Johnny D. Over here, I'm Eric G. You've been listening to around the House all over the radio with you.