and you are listening to Ask the Experts radio show I'm John Wolf on talk radio
1190 and we have a doubly good show today normally at this time we have
Roger Wakefield and we do and we've got another Roger W Roger Williamson from
the foundation field so we have a plumbing expert and the foundation
expert here on talk radio 1190 Rogers how are you doing this morning
fantastic John how you doing great beautiful day sounds good sounds good
and let me just fire off a couple of phone numbers in case someone's about to
hop out of the car and websites our usual guest Roger Roger
Wakefield who's here Texasgreenplumbing.com Texasgreenplumbing.com
his number 972-442-4101 972-
442-4101 and as show goes on we've got Roger Williamson
of Williamsonfoundation.com easy to remember 469-698-
8332 469-698-8332
and if you have a question our number here 214-787-
1190 normally we're just talking plumbing at this time normally is it
weird for you not normally we are and it's not weird because a lot of calls
that we get come from foundation problems we we do sewer and water tests
for realtors all the time we've got into the to a great relationship with
Williamson foundation doing either pretest when people are buying and if
they have foundation problems always tell them about Williamson foundation
because that they do amazing work and have an amazing warranty and sometimes
when Williamson foundation does a job they'll call us in afterwards to check
the plumbing to make sure that their customer is taken care of and doesn't
have an issue that if it's gonna lead to problems later and Roger Williamson yes
sir what is your angle on it as far as you know helping people who are looking
to buy a house the same sort of thing and it seems sound so scary and you hear
so many foundation commercials and yes it's a my thought is just put some soil
over that no one will notice it and right there's there's a lot of put a
bandaid on it and hope it doesn't get worse
out there unfortunately that doesn't always work with foundation we do work
very closely with Texas Green Plumbing with Roger Wakefield and and really
enjoy our working relationship because plumbing is such a vital issue when in
regards to a foundation particularly a slab foundation which is most of what we
have in North Texas if you have a plumbing leak it will create a lot of
movement a lot of chaos that may or may not be correctable per se by foundation
repair methods oftentimes we look at houses and probably 15% of the
inspections we do for people it looks more like they have a plumbing
leak that an actual foundation repair issue and so we'll refer them to Texas
Green and they get it looked at get it inspected oftentimes they do find a leak
fix the leak and that often times fixes their foundation problem okay you know
back to Roger Wakefield do the leaks ever add to the foundation problems or
is it just this is what it is and his expression is it is what it is or can
one little thing kind of like dental problems
I don't feel like getting it done today but is it gonna get a lot worse if I wait
two weeks to be honest that's probably a better question for Roger Roger here's
what I like about him Roger is one of the most knowledgeable people in
foundation I've ever met and dealt with I actually started working with them
because he's got a young lady that works with him named Kasey and I do a lot of
networking as we've talked about before and I was at a master networks meeting
one day which if anybody out there wants to learn about networking master
networks is a great place to do it but this young lady stands up behind me
doing her 30-second commercial to tell people about Williamson foundation and
the thing that she said that struck me she said the first foundation Roger did
thirty-one years ago we still warranty that job and if those people called the
day and something was wrong we would go fix it it doesn't matter who owns the
house now we would go fix that because we warranty our work forever and as soon
as I heard that I'm like oh my God I I want to get your card right and that's
unheard of it's it's a very rare experience to deal with a
foundation company that truthfully honestly warranties there weren't forever like
they do so Roger let me ask you does the plumbing if there's a leak under the
house lead to more foundation problems or anything like that yeah most of the
time it does the soil here in North Texas and throughout much of Texas is
very highly expansive clay soils and when clay soil gets wet it expands when
it gets dry it contracts but the other facet of clay soil list doesn't transmit
moisture very well so if you have a leak underneath your house the area near that
leak is the soil is getting really really wet and it's expanding it's
moving and the expansive forces of the soil are far greater than the weight of
the house so it will start to move the house around which can indeed create an
actual foundation problem sometimes if you catch it early enough you fix the
leak and things will settle back down sometimes if it goes long enough the
actual movement created by the leak will damage the foundation to the point that
you actually need foundation repair as well and and let me just say that the
the the alternative can happen as well the foundation can move from natural
causes which can then in turn damage the plumbing and create so it's we've really
got a chicken and the egg sometimes the foundation moves and
causes the plumbing problem which then exacerbates the foundation problem
sometimes the plumbing itself is the is the root cause and creates the it goes
first and creates the the movement it's almost impossible in most cases to
determine which came first and where the root cause was it almost sounds to me as
though we'd be well off if instead of plastic pipes or copper pipes under the
house there's a some sort of like flexi pipes so that if the slab moved a little
bit at least the things would have less you know less stress on the exact mold
of the of the pipes underneath I think that's something Roger and I may work on
inventing right after the show well and and you know I have seen a lot of the newer water
supply lines are a flexible pipe which i think is great inside the house outside
the house these these plastic pipes for water and gas in the
yard they kill us because we touch them with a shovel and they and they burst
and so I'm not a real fan of those out there but most of the leaks that we see
in relation to foundation problems are actually sewer line leaks not supply
line leaks supply line leaks usually don't go very long before somebody
figures out something's happening either we've got water we can hear water
running at night or we get a water bill that just is ridiculously inordinate
it's usually a sewer line leak which will not show up on your water bill it
also in most cases even though you have a sewer line leak everything flows just
fine you don't necessarily get blockages in your sewer line in in a lot of cases
but every time water flows through that pipe it's leaking out I'm not sure how a
flexible sewer line would work but it is an interesting concept it would it would
save a lot of a lot of issues because the soil moves a lot foundation moves a
lot the sewer lines are embedded in the soil and so if there's a differential
movement between the house and the soil a foot down 2 feet down something's got
to give right flexible lines I imagine could buckle a little and close up on
themselves as a thing of car problems with water where they didn't have your
hose that you needed in the middle of the desert so we got this flexi hose
here yes but it can it can knot up on itself well in the soil and like say the
soil constantly expands and contracts constantly seasonally with with moisture
changes so a flexible flexible pipe is is gonna get crushed basically when the
soil starts to expand and then your your 4-inch pipe becomes a one and a half
inch pipe and you may not be able to get everything down it that needs to go down
it what type of what type of pipe do you like to see when you're doing foundation
what do you feel safest with well really that's that's more of a plumbing
question but I will say that cast-iron is our least favorite because over time
cast-iron pipes rot and when they rot they weaken so a little foundation
movement from foundation repair or just foundation movement
can cause them to break PVC seems to hold up better over time and in my
opinion and this is a one for Roger Wakefield is probably a little easier to
fix PVC has some flexibility to it that's what's nice about it right and if
you do have foundation problems and you you have a PVC drainage line it's gonna
give a little bit it's gonna move a little bit because if the ground has got
as you say wet and expanded and moved around that it's probably pushing that
pipe just a little bit with it I'm cast-iron there is no flexibility
you're talking iron pipe and as Roger Williamson said once you put that
pipe in ground it starts rusting it is what it is now they have a coating on it
and a liner inside of it that helps prevent that but over time it can still
happen so therefore you've got a pipe that starts rotting and you your house
foundation moves an inch that pipe not gonna bend an inch it's gonna break okay
what sort of problems do you see everywhere people are contracting with
you to look at a house they're thinking of buying that causes you to call Roger
Williamsson if we go in and do a plumbing or sewer test to be honest if
we go in even before we get to the test if we walk through the house or around
the house and see major movement any major movement at all I may tell them
look you may want to call a Foundation company first and we can talk more about
that later but I don't necessarily and I'm gonna go ahead and do a sewer water
test if they're like look we're thinking about buying the house so let me know
what we've got because Roger may come out and say okay you've got you know a
quarter inch off here or something so it's not gonna be anything major but it
kind of depends on where they're at in the buying stage if I'm representing a
buyer I'll go out into a sewer and water tests but we do a visual inspection of
the house and if we see anything major major cracks major separation doors
sticking different things walking through the house we may say hey look
you may want to call Williamson foundation and just get them out to look
at it they're good people to deal with okay now we've got to take a break in a
second but first you say a quarter inch is not that big a
deal what about what level what size would you say is something that you
better get the other Roger W out there well and and we don't if I see cracks
that are big enough that that's a crack it's not just not a crack in the mortar
or something if it's starting to separate I always tell them you may want
to get this checked out because if I'm buying a house I don't want to buy a
house and then though I've got to spend five ten twenty thousand dollars on it I
agree we are speaking with Roger Williamson and Roger Wakefield Roger
Wakefield of TexasGreenPlumbing.com and Roger Williamson of Williamson
foundation.com this is talk radio 1190 I'm John Wolf
on the ask the experts radio show