sdello, yes we are on landfill and in 1990 post-tension slab was the thing to do in this area. What does that mean that the slab should be supported on grade beams? Do you mean they should dig up around the foundation (now that would be an expensive job as it is pretty much cement all the way around the house) and put some sort of pilings into the soil? We are not the original owners, but are the first people to live there. The original owners bought on spec to make a profit. The first year the builder would calk things, but then they moved on to their next development and then went out of business under that name. I would say that for the most part all these cracks have been there at least 10 of the 15 years in varying degrees. I used to caulk the ones I could reach, but never touched the cracks where the walls meet the ceiling. Funny thing, until I started wearing my glasses at home, I never even noticed them, but with my glasses everything came into focus. :-\ Some of the patches they originally did have held up the last 12 years or so. Some just kept spreading. I think made a mistake installing plantation sutters on all the windows before the settling stopped or at least slowed down as both sides of the house have sticking problems with the shutters. That was putting pressure on the opening. From the very beginning there was not a straight wall in the entire house and wall sections from top to bottom weren't even the same measurement, meaning left to right. We pretty much have patio surrounding 3 sides of the house, no contact with dirt, and then one section of the front is the driveway/garage, next to that is a planterbox area and then next to that is the frontdoor. I'd say the only sections that are exposed to dirt would be a section of the living room that is about 6'. I'd say it has probably been at a slow rate, but just never paid a whole lot of attention to it until I realized the amount of money we were spending for remodeling two bathrooms, kitchen and laundry room, also carpeting and whole interior painting. We have never painted the interior for the whole 15 years. Just minor touchups where I caulked or where there was a little wear and tear. The windows all operate, though both sides of the house, a couple windows are definitely out of square. Of course, they were like that when we moved in at 1 year old. I had the builder redo the one window, but didn't check it right away, but found that he didn't really do a great job replacing it level anyway. I'd say the areas where I patched myself, and didn't do the job right, just adding caulking and painting over it, some held up ok, others just kept reappearing after a few months or year. This was supposed to be our "forever home", so we are really upset that there might be a problem. We are hoping that this is just part of the pain of living on landfill and that there is no major problem. Can't afford to do repairs and remodel and the kitchens and bathrooms...

I wanted to revive my thread to see if anyone else could chime in. I ended up buying a 4ft level cause I wanted to accurately see just how bad the floors sloped. From the end of my living room wall, I had to lift the level 1 inch exactly to get the bubble level. So that's 1 inch off in just 4 ft. I slid the level down to the end of where it was, and I had to lift about 1/2 inch to get level. So now I'm at 1.5 inches off level in 8 ft. Is this really bad for a slab on grade foundation in a 15 year old house? My wife thinks I'm crazy and keeps telling me to enjoy the house, but I can't stop thinking about it. She doesn't notice the slopes like I do, but I've always been more in tune with things than she is. I had a foundation repair guy come out about a month ago and he used a measuring device. I remember my sons room he was saying was over an inch off from entry to end. I asked him about repairing it, and he said and I quote "if I were you, if it bothered me that much, I would just sell the house". He proceeded to tell me what kind of mess I could be getting myself into if I wanted to level the floors. The doorways would have to be re-cut, and all my kitchen tiles would have to come up and be replaced. He said you could end up getting yourself into a real money pit. I'm just extremely distraught by this. My house sat on the market for 8 months before we bought it. Myself, including my realtor said the biggest reason the house wasn't selling was because of an extremely steep hill we have in the back yard. And the hill has no retaining wall, which it desperately needs. She said the house also didn't appeal to older people because of the hill, and that it's just a reality that it would never appeal to older folks even if we did put in a retaining wall. I can't help but wonder if other people noticed the floors during walk throughs, where I hadn't? I honestly never noticed when the house was empty and I was just doing a regular walk through. It's only after we bought it and I was in here on a daily basis that I noticed. I asked the foundation repair guy how this flaw would have even happened. And he said possibly because our house does sit on a hill, and the landscape is naturally flowing downward from the front of our house to the back, that the concrete just settled uneven. But I can't believe the home builders wouldn't have checked that out before framing even began! I just hope this doesn't prevent us from selling this house someday if we ever decide to.

From what I have read on other posts, it seems when a house is initially built and carpet is installed that the sub floor can be less than perfect because carpet is much more forgiving. Slabs are especially a problem this way. The flooring guys were maybe not responsible for prepping the sub floor, but they should have told you it needed to be fixed before they would proceed. If you can see seams of sub floor, rolling with a roller won't help. They either need to take care of lippage or fill and level a gap at the seam, whichever it is. If the job is not finished I would get them to stop immediately as it sounds like what is there will need to be torn out. Those high wavy spots will wear prematurely not to mention it doesn't look nice. Hope you can get a resolution.

No engineer will falsify a report or create an unworkable solution. But the element of unconscious bias that creates a prior restraint to thought processs enters into any transaction. An engineer may see that issue and right away think of Solution A. And know that it is the best choice for the home‘s long term viability. But she also also knows that it is the builder who is paying for that choice, and the builder will want something more cost effective. So, Solution B for Budget and C for Costcutting are developed. Neither are as good as Solution A, but they get the builder out of the immediate jam, at a price he is willing to pay. And the contractor presents B and C, to the customer, without ever even mentioning A. Because A never made it into the report at all, because the engineer knew that the cheapskate hack would not pay for it, and would rather just walk away from the project. The customer might have wanted the best solution, not the cheapest solution. The customer might even have been willing to pay the cost difference between the expensive and the cheap solution. But the customer didn’t pay for an independent report to go to them with the recommended beat solution included, as well as any others. Any design is only as good as the available budget for implementing the design. If an engineer consistently recommended the most costly approach, even though it was the best approach, she’d stop getting any calls from builders. Which might not be a bad thing for the engineer, as who in this industry likes dealing with cheap hacks?