BOGUS ENGINEERING REPORT

[HELPDEB]

Dear all,

My husband and I had and enigineering report for sinkhole activity done several months age. The firm that did the report said the cracking on our pool was from initial concrete shrinkage and the cracks in our driveway and garage were from tree roots. Needless to say, I learned we could challenge the results so I had 3 additional expert witnesses review my report, and hands down, we had absolute sinkhole activity. My original report even had an accidental grouting diagram inserted, we had an anomoly 3/4 the length of our house on one side, and one of our boring logs showed an 8 foot deep void/cavern in the front of our house. The insurance company is now in the process of getting a repair program together, does anyone know what I can expect next?

Please Help Deb

[admin]

Deb,
It is very rare that a geotechnical firm will falsify data on purpose.

I know this sounds wierd but geotechs cannot detect sinkholes directly. They detect sinkholes through conclusions extracted from the data they collected from drilling,GPR,hand augers, ER, and various methods. Sometimes the geotechnical firms just do not test in the right areas to encounter the actual problem. I've seen it said before that you can drill in three different places and get three different results. The other part of detection is decoding the data brought in from the drillers. While the data is hardly ever falsified since it is such a technical process,but sometimes and geotechs can come up with different opinions from the same data. Sometimes geotechs will say one this in the front for the report (where homeowners look) and sneak the bad stuff in, in the back of the report

Bottom Line ===> Always get more than one opinion.


To answer your question about what happens next, your insurance company will call out three foundation repair companies to bid the job BASED ON THE GEOTECH REPORT. The insurance company will usually make you choose which company to use and then they will start to fix your property.

Your grouting job will look something like this....

http://yount.us/grout/

[HELPDEB]

Thank you for your reply. When we received our initial report, it showed a paleosink 3/4 the length of our property. Two out of the 3 drilling sights had extremely low blow counts, low N values, loss of drilling circulation at all 3 drilling area's, and several WOH indications. I had to repeatedly request copies of my GPR images. When I finally received them, they were incomplete, illedgible, on 11X 14 sheets of paper that were hand marked with thick black magic markers for reference points that were not ledgible as well. My engineering report also included a detailed grouting and injection diagram however, no reference was made to it in the report. When I spoke to the main geologist he said it was an error and should have never been there and he also verified that indeed, I had an 8 foot deep void in my front yard and that was normal. I challenged my insurance company about the report after I had 2 additional experts review the report. The insurance company finally sent it to another firm who also agreed that there was clear evidence of active sinkhole activity. The other experts I had review my report also discovered additional large anomolys that were never investigated from the original firm that did the report. I am still awaiting my repair estimate from the second firm that my insurance company hired for additional review. To the best of my knowledge, that is the only estimate I am to receive from them, unless I provide my own and I really do not know where to start on that issue as well. That is in summary, why I am so concerned.

[admin]

This is not atypical of the current homeowners plight.
This is exactly why this website is here.
Always get multiple opinions when denied by your insurance carrier.

Admin