My nearly two hundred year old home.....I am laughing........is so out of plumb there isn't a straight wall or rectangular door or window in the joint. The foundation, however is pristine. It is nothing but huge stone slabs, and doesn't even appear to have any type of mortar or cement to it. Prolly why it's been able to tolerate the expansion and contraction. I live in clay country. I am not afraid of this old house, and just plan to touch up plaster as an on going project and do one room a year as and if needed. I would really want a foundation assessed however if it were block before any problems got too far out of hand. The proper time would have been proactively, before purchase. Foundations scare me because I cannot see "minor" repairs where they are concerned. The big problem is getting somebody in who does not stand to profit from your problem.....if you know what I mean. It's very hard to take somebody's word about the severity of a problem if they can make more money based on how bad you need help. That's what some of these other threads have been about. Two contractors with totally different stories and estimates. Who can you believe? My ex.......a civil engineer........used to do home inspections. He stood to gain nothing if something was minor or major. The fee was modest and he knew what he was doing. I even asked him to come with me when I was considering a property for investment a few years ago. I'd rather hear the estimate then than later. LOL. Good luck.

A foundation that has been repaired and is still buckling and having moisture infiltration problems is a very serious issue. Enough so that it's puzzling that after several offers and inspections from non specialists that the owner wouldn't get their own engineer's report. Perhaps they are afraid of what he'd find, and then they would be required to share that with any future buyers. So, they don't get the report, and put the onus on the buyer to do so. IF the sellers would pay for the report, I think I'd let the offer ride for now subject to that report. If they refuse, then you could pay for it yourself. ($500-$700 would be typical) but, you might be out that money if the report comes back with major work being needed and you decided to walk away. The problem is obviously more of a serious nature, and the fix will be in the thousands to fix it. How many thousands depends on the root cause and the ultimate fix. Completely regrading a lot with mature trees in existance on it that is adjacent to an easement not owned by you is fraught with unknown costs, including the potential for having to remove several trees and paying to connect to a storm drain instead of just doing some type of swale to direct water away from the house. I think that if you truly LOVE this house, that you should consider this part of the birth pangs of acquiring it. IF you can get it cheap enough. What "cheap enough" is, well, that will be up in the air until the engineer's report. Getting that report is probably worth it to you, simply because you've fallen in love. And, the other flip side to that is, if you provide the homeowners a copy of that engineer's report, they are required to disclose that information to any future buyers, so that would be the absolute FIRST thing I'd do with the report. Make them a copy, send it registered mail. They can't deny the facts now. And now, they are required to share them. This is going to sound nasty, but it "contaminates the field" for the sellers. They can't claim ignorance then. They either have to reduce the price to deal status for you or anyone else who might consider the property, or else they have to keep paying the mortgage on a house they've already moved from, or they have to let it go into foreclosure. Either way, you're the winner here, because you're the bird in the hand. If you push that angle, then you might end up with a substantial price reduction to make it worth repairing the foundation and drainage issues.

Basement stairwells usually have a seperate drain to the sump as do each run of tile from the perimeter of the building. There is filter cloth which is used to line drainage systems of the type you describe. It was not always used. If the cloth was not used, silt from the backfill and years of soaking rain will infiltrate the stone surrounding the tile and eventually the tile itself. Settlement will also cause dips in the pipe itself which will cause some water to "belly UP". Some of this silt will serve to level out those bellies and allow the water to drain. So a little silt at these points is ok. Rather than throw the most dire probelms at you and try to scare you with the more complex and worse case scenarios, I'll stick with the simplest and most affordable action. I think this would apply to your situation for a couple of reasons. One, the house is 24 years old and if it were a "really bad" problem, you would be complaining of flooding, not slow water drainage. Two, I've seen the problem you describe many times and the easy fix has always worked, with the soil composition you've described. If you had clay soil, it would have been much more complex. In my experience, I think the drain tile from the walk out stairway to the pump has a 24 year buildup of silt in it. There are a number of ways to clear it. It will be a little time consuming (a few hours) but it is a DYI job and will be is as good as new when you're finished. Remove the drain screen and put a garden hose without a nozzel into the cellar drain and let water run into it at a rate it will readily drain (you will increase rate as you clear the silt). At the sump end, insert another garden hose with a nozzel into the pipe where the water drains from. The nozzel should be the single cylinder type and locked into the heavy spray position. Start inserting the hose further into the pipe, the further the better, while running the water at full pressure. Silt will start washing out. As the flow increase, increase the water pressure to the outside hose. If the outside hose can easily be inserted further into the drain, do it. Keep working it this way until the watre runs clear. This method will keep you from clogging the pipe with silt. I don't recommend you do this but, once complete, you could put a ping pong ball in one end and a shop vac at the other and the ball would pop right through. Now how did I know that?

A real estate engineer may be able to find you a new home with better soil conditions.