They stood in the doorway of the back bedroom, Willard fuming and speechless, Sai calm and dispassionate.
Willard didn’t need to say anything.
It was all there. The sinuous crack nearly bisecting the room, disappearing beneath the baseboard with the clear intention of continuing on into Suze’s bedroom and, who knew, on from there into the master bedroom.
The rough fissure fully exposed along the back wall, inches wide and black as hell, who knew how deep.
The odor, even though faint, still cloying and oppressive five full days after the spill. Suggestive of rot and decay and suppuration, suggestive of many things but not of sewage.
Sai merely stood there, impassive.
When he finally spoke, it was with a certain amount of sympathy in his voice. “I’ve see this before. House after house. There’s one place in Sunset Hills where the living room floor is so displaced along one side that there is a four-inch differential. It’s like the owners have half a sunken room. They are one of the unlucky ones. It didn’t slip that much until after the insurance deadline passed.”
Willard stared at him, speechless.
“I would guess that the side wall here probably shifts as much as a couple of inches between winter and summer.” He studied the line where ceiling and wall met. “See there, in the closet, where the new plaster is already cracking. You’ll probably have that in all three rooms along this wall. On family with a problem like this told me that in the summer, they can see stars between the wall and the ceiling.”
He turned to face Willard.
“At least this house has wide eaves. Probably you won’t have any rain coming directly inside unless the wind is especially strong.”
He paced over to the back wall and knelt beside the break. He crumbled a bit of the concrete between his fingers. Then he took a pencil-like implement, extended it to a couple of feet, and worked it into the crack. Inch after inch of the thin metal disappeared. He wiggled it back and forth. Willard could hear concrete scraping against the metal.
Sai pulled the shaft out and studied it.
“See here,” he said, pointing to a clump of damp brown caught on the end. “The crack extends completely through the foundation slab, more than a foot. This”-indicating the clump-“is soil from beneath the house.”
He ran his hand up and down the back wall.
“Most likely, this wall will continue to pull away from the slab, a bit at a time. The patio out there is slowing the movement a fair amount, but even that is being pushed gradually toward the back of the yard.
“I wouldn’t worry too much though,” he said, facing Willard again. “It will probably take a couple of decades more before the place threatens to collapse.” He shrugged as if to say, wish I could tell you something else, but facts are facts.
“What can we do,” Willard whispered, stunned beyond anger.
“The house is about 1600 square feet, right?”
Willard nodded.
Sai pulled out his calculator and began working it. His fingers flew from key to key, tap tap tap, faster than Willard’s eyes could follow. Then Sai made a few notes on his clipboard.
“Okay. First, you’ll need a geologic survey. Figure about $10,000.”
“Didn’t they do a survey when they built…”
“Sure, but surprise, surprise, the original reports for these two subdivisions disappeared years ago. You’ll need a new one.
“Then permits from the city. Considering what has to be done, another couple of thousand.”
“But we don’t…”
Sai continued inexorably. He had long since realized that it was more merciful to get all of the bad news out at once.
“Then you have a choice. The easy way would be to dig a trench, say three feet deep, all around the house. Install pneumatic jacks every three or four feet and gradually raise the house sufficiently to drill horizontally into the existing slab and insert as much rebar as possible. Then force a layer of cement across the top of the slab to fill in the cracks. That will have to cure for a couple of months, probably, then the house can be let back down into almost its original position.
“Of course, that will create a host of new problems inside, which will have to be repaired. Tearing down a fair amount of the drywall, retiling and recarpeting, repainting the whole shebang.”
“How much would that cost?”
“Conservatively, figure seventy-five to a hundred thousand. Plus loss of living space for several months.”
“But…” Willard began to feel as if he were simply a machine stalled on one word. “But…”
“That would be the easiest way, but probably would end up being only a temporary solution. The ground would continue to expand and contract and the slab, still fractured in places no matter how well supported and repaired, would keep shifting.
“Isn’t there a…what’s the hard way.”
“Oh, that would cost you may be three, four hundred thousand.”
Willard gulped audibly.”
Sai looked around the room.
“Tear the whole place down, start over, and do the thing right.”
From the Malibu Times, 15 May 2003:
SMALL TEMBLOR FELT, NO DAMAGE REPORTED
A 3.5 earthquake was reported yesterday, its epicenter five miles off the Malibu coast. Although windows rattled and floors shook slightly, no damage has been reported.
The quake was not an unusual occurrence for this part of the California coastline, since…