Protecting Your Investment: Understanding Foundation Issues and Repairs

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:00:36 to 00:01:10

Hello. Hello, everybody. My name is Mike Mills, and I am this Texas Real Estate and Finance podcast, and I am a mortgage broker here in the DFW area. My team and I focus on helping local agents grow their business by providing insight into all aspects of real estate. We can show you how to better market yourself, provide referrals to a great provide referrals to great real estate related vendors in the area that will take amazing care of your clients and provide some simple tips and tricks to streamline your business so you can help more buyers and sellers.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:01:10 to 00:01:38

So if you'd like to have a conversation about your business and what we can do, please do not hesitate to reach out. And of course, if you have any buyers or sellers needing to get or excuse me, any buyers needing to get pre approved to purchase a home, we'd love to take great care of them as well. There's my commercial for the afternoon. And speaking of great real estate related referrals today, I am pleased to welcome Reagan Parsons to the podcast. And you get the fanfare.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:01:38 to 00:02:18

See, so many moving parts here, man. So many moving parts. So Reagan's, the owner of Correct Roofing and foundation, they have been in business over ten years here in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Reagan and his team specialize in residential and commercial roofing restoration, and they also offer solar installation, which it's a new thing for them, but they're working in that direction and are foundation repair experts first and foremost. And that's the reason I got Reagan to come in with me today, because we're going to chat a little bit about that and kind of offer up some insight into what all goes into foundation issues.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:02:18 to 00:02:22

So how are you doing these days, my friend? I'm doing great. Yeah? Great. Thank you for having me.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:02:22 to 00:02:56

Yeah, no, I'm glad you came in. So we're going to get into a little bit about your business and kind of talk about what you guys do. But I really want to get kind of into detail a little bit more about the foundation side of things and what all that entails, especially how common it is here in Dallas Fort Worth, and then what to look for, how to get it fixed, talk about maybe even some of the costs involved. And like I said before, we might even get into some old Pantigo Christian Academy baseball stories if you want. So we'll just see where everything goes.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:02:57 to 00:03:33

So before we get into all that, though, why don't you tell me a little bit how you even got into the contracting did, or I should say the roofing and foundation world? How'd that? Uh, well, you probably think it was my dad, but it no. Yeah, he's in commercial construction, but yeah, just not long out of high school, aaron Finn, another Pan Academy guy, he ended up as marketing director over at PermaPure and brought me on over there, marketing team. And then not long after that, they pulled me into the sales team, evaluating properties.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:03:33 to 00:03:50

That just kind of went from there, that started there. So it's just one of the things where you just had a budy of you you're looking for a gig, and just let's let's let's see if we can make this work. Yeah, I was positive I was never going to get into construction, watch my dad drive around, yell at people on his phone before our baseball games. I was never going to do it. Yes.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:03:50 to 00:04:05

Shout out to Reggie if he's watching. By the way, one of my favorite baseball coaches of all time. Yeah, he's a good one. So, funny story about that. Just because Regan and I met at Pantigo Christian Academy, we played baseball together for one year.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:04:05 to 00:04:11

You were actually, I think when you got there, you were a sophomore, maybe. Were you a freshman? You were freshman. You were a senior? I was a freshman, yes.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:04:11 to 00:04:23

So you were a pitcher and I was a catcher. So we got to know each other a little bit there and then you and Lonnie came in at that time. Yeah, lonnie and Brandon piles. Yes, brandon too. I played second mainly.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:04:23 to 00:04:27

I pitched a little bit. Brandon and Lonnie were on our select team. That's right. Warriors team. That's right.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:04:27 to 00:04:42

They were freshman stud pitchers. Yeah, they were. I mean, now, granted, we're at a Taps Private Christian school or, you know, it wasn't like the world was being dominant, but they were the best pitchers we had on the team by a mile. Probably the best pitcher, no offense. Brad Gilbert.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:04:42 to 00:05:02

Nate, too. Yeah, Nate was good, too. Both those guys are good. But it was funny because I don't know if you ever knew this story, but when you came on board, when you guys got there, the year before you all got there, we had a different coach before your dad got there. To coach was such a breath of fresh air when he showed up.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:05:03 to 00:05:40

But our coach previously and I won't say his name, but to say that baseball wasn't his first sport would probably be an understatement a little bit. And Brad Gilbert and I and Jack and Nate and all this, we used to joke because when we were playing, we didn't have signs. You know, you got your third base, first base coach first. We only had one coach for the most, um, so we didn't have a first base coach, just had a third base coach. And then during the game, when you're looking for the take sign or the bunt or swing away or steal or whatever, he didn't give us any signs.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:05:40 to 00:05:55

So it was like a couple of weeks into the season, because that was my first year when we were there. Chris Nodgrass was there playing at the time, too. He was a little older than he was a year older than you or than me. Your junior year was the first year there? Yeah, my junior year's, first year, I was only there for been a long time.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:05:55 to 00:06:06

I forgot that basically like a year and a half I was at your. State game where you got eliminated. Oh, yeah, that was a whole lot of fun. No, it wasn't a long time. I think we lost like 56 to seven or so.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:06:06 to 00:06:25

Maybe I was at the game before that. Yeah, that doesn't sound familiar. No, that was the state championship game and we got our butts kicked. But anyway, so the funny thing is we finally talked to coach. We're like, hey, look, we really need to get some signs down so that we all are on the same page as to what we're doing.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:06:25 to 00:06:44

So if I'm hitting and he's stealing, we know whether I need to swing or not. If we're doing a hit and run, whatever. And so he was like, okay. And he came up with colors, the signs he was going to yell out colors third base, he would yell out like, red, red, or fuchsia. Fuchsia.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:06:44 to 00:06:55

That was the one we joke about, but he would yell it out. And so after the first time he yells fuchsia and we steal second base. They pretty much got what you're doing. Yeah, they got it figured out. So it wasn't that tough.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:06:55 to 00:07:27

But what was funny is so we were begging him after about two or three games of that because everybody knew what we were doing. Please, can we just have regular signs like we'll do them if we could, coach third, we'll send one of our guys out there and it was thing he made a deal with us. Like we had to win like two or three games in a row or something like that in order for us to be allowed to have regular signs. He might have been mad at he. Couldn'T because of the colored yelling.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:07:27 to 00:08:06

No, we actually got to the point where I think it was either myself or Brad or somebody be standing on third base and we're actually giving normal signs that you get in a baseball game. We got to that point, but I think he was mad because at some point in the season and I don't recall exactly who it was, it might have been Brad, but I won't throw him under the bus if it wasn't. But I just did. We were on a road, we were going somewhere to go play like waco or something like that, and he put, I guess it's X lax in his coffee on the so he's driving the bus. We'd make a stop at a gas station to go in there and we buy the xlax.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:08:06 to 00:08:12

And while he's in there, we put it in his coffee and then take the bus a little bit further and we have to stop about 30 minutes up the road.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:08:15 to 00:08:33

So yeah, we had all kinds of hijinks in those days, there's no doubt. But all that stuff's behind us. I can't remember who that coach was, but if I could, I'd find a way to get this podcast to yeah, yeah. I think he figured it out a little bit later on, maybe. But it was definitely an adventure.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:08:33 to 00:09:05

I mean, anybody that played at that know, I think we had bernie diamond was on that team and Chris Snodgrass and Brad Gilbrith and Jack Jenkins and Nate Van Cleave. And we were a bunch of trouble to say the anyway, that's that's the old baseball story there, I guess. So what was it was there know, because obviously, your know, did a lot of contracting work over the years, actually. He's still kicking around, man. He didn't give it up.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:09:05 to 00:09:18

He's still going? Doing the Texas Roadhouse in Burleson. Wow. And is it Tyler? He's been building all over the country, but he got two local ones now, so he gets to stay home a little bit.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:09:18 to 00:09:28

Yeah, I guess. I'm not surprised because I don't ever see your dad, like, slowing down. He's pretty much on the still. Yes, the exact same as you remember. I loved your dad, man.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:09:28 to 00:09:48

He was great. And he was one of the I didn't have a lot of exposure to different coaches at that point, but he was definitely one of the baseball. He was a very good coach, basketball and baseball. And you all had the batting cage and everything, so we actually got real uniforms the year you guys showed up. He ran it just like his select because he was running all those select teams back, know?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:09:48 to 00:09:52

I know. When did he stop doing that? After Jared and I quit playing. After y'all quit playing? Yep.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:09:52 to 00:10:04

That was it. Yeah. I coached my son for a we. I started coaching when he was like in kindergarten or um and then I coached him all the way up until about 6th grade. He's in 7th grade now.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:10:04 to 00:10:10

And then. Yeah, I was done with all that at that point. Yeah. It seems like you all had fun doing it, though. Yeah, those are fun days.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:10:10 to 00:10:14

Those are fun days. Do you have kids? I do. Two girls. Okay.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:10:14 to 00:10:22

My twelve year old is a competitive dancer. My six year old is, too, is her first year doing it. My twelve year old is a competitive dancer. Nice. She's hardcore into it.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:10:22 to 00:10:28

Yeah. So you get to go have all the A costume crazy dance. Dad? Yeah. Are you building sets yet?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:10:28 to 00:10:35

Are you there yet? Yes. I help carrying them onto the stage and unload them out of the trailer and all that. No, I don't build them. Yeah, my wife did that.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:10:35 to 00:10:42

She told me stories about all that when she was growing up. About all the dance competitions and everything. It's intense. Oh, yeah. It reminds me of select baseball.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:10:42 to 00:10:48

Oh, yeah. No, it's just a whole other side of things. It really is. Yeah. I know a lot more about dance than I thought I was going to in my life.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:10:50 to 00:10:55

Do you ever fill in? From time to time. Get out. No, they haven't asked me yet. No, you haven't had to step out there.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:10:55 to 00:11:05

I'm waiting for my opportunity to show what I can do. Do y'all have to travel quite a bit? We do some. Yeah. We'll go to Houston this year, but then Nationals, we always travel.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:11:05 to 00:11:14

It's either Vegas or Orlando. Last year was Nashville. This year is Sandusky, Ohio. Surprisingly. So you go from Nashville or Orlando or Vegas to Ohio.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:11:14 to 00:11:20

I get to go to the home of Callahan Auto Parts. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. Okay. I heard it's a pretty cool town, though.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:11:20 to 00:11:31

Is it really? I've known nothing about it, but I've. Been to Ohio before. We have a branch, actually, for our company that's up there. When they came in, we kind of went up there and got them all set up.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:11:31 to 00:11:44

We do recruiting and stuff for really? What's crazy about Ohio is it's like especially they have, like, like, like, which is crazy. There's all kinds of colors. There's nothing that ever happens around here. But it's not Vegas, though, right?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:11:44 to 00:11:57

Well, honestly, I'm not crazy about Vegas. And then we've done Disney enough times now it's going to be a breath fresh air. It's an hour west of Cleveland, so get to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Oh, nice. Yes.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:11:57 to 00:12:02

My kids to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That'll be? And myself. Yeah. Maybe catch an Indian.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:12:02 to 00:12:10

Well, the NFL canton's, is it close to there? I don't know. I haven't looked. Yeah, because I actually went to Canton. They'd be bored to tears, but I'd make them do it.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:12:11 to 00:12:31

So having the two girls is there, obviously, I'm absolutely certain you love your daughters and all the stuff that you do with them, but do you kind of miss he's like, oh, man, if I had that boy, the baseball and the football and all that. I'm so obsessed with sports. My girlfriend, I get my fix. Yeah. And we got friends whose kids play baseball.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:12:32 to 00:12:49

I go to their games. My brother, I got a nephew Be coming up, so I'm sure I'll coach him some. Oh, nice. I'm just trying to enjoy my daughter's dance career, where I got her before she goes to college, and Hartley, if she decides to keep doing it, because she sacrifices a lot. Oh, yeah.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:12:49 to 00:13:00

Miss a lot of birthday parties, a lot of sleepovers, and absolutely. If I had to make her do it, we wouldn't do it. No, it ain't cheap, either. Just like any of that stuff. Yeah, she loves it.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:13:00 to 00:13:14

It's her passion. Well, that's good. It's hard. You got to expose kids to a lot of different things and kind of try to figure out exactly what they're into and what their passions are, and it's really cool when they can find something at a younger age and kind of really get into it. Yeah.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:13:14 to 00:13:23

She's loved it since she was three. Oh, wow. Never had to make her go to rehearsal. There's been a few tears for birthday parties, but that's about it. Yeah.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:13:23 to 00:13:30

I mean, they're kids. That's going to happen. Well, that's awesome, man. I'm glad to hear that. I know.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:13:31 to 00:13:44

My wife and I talk about this all the time with our kids. That my daughter's 15, my son's 13, and it's just a matter of time before they're going to be out of the house. And then I'm like, what the hell are we going to do with ourselves? I got blink of an eye. Really?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:13:44 to 00:13:59

Where you're at. It really is. And every weekend for the next four months, pretty much, we either have a baseball tournament or we have a volleyball tournament every single weekend. And my son practices baseball three days a week. My daughter practices volleyball two to three days a week.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:13:59 to 00:14:14

So it's like every night we have a practice, every weekend we have a tournament. There's no slowing down with that stuff. But it'll end someday. You got to enjoy it while you can. Seem like it went on forever when we were their age, and now it's.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:14:14 to 00:14:20

A blink of an eye. Yeah. And then it's gone. Yeah. And then you're sitting around with your spouse going, okay, what the hell are we going to do now?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:14:20 to 00:14:28

Do I play softball this season? Can my knees handle it? Getting a little old. Can everything hold up and keep rolling? We'll see.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:14:29 to 00:14:47

All right, man. Well, I really want to get into kind of the nuts and bolts now of everything. Obviously, you've been doing this for a long time. You fixed foundation for one of my lake properties. You did some work for my sister, so you've done a great job.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:14:47 to 00:15:17

I've never heard anything but rave reviews about your service and how you guys handle the communication with the clients, make sure everybody understands what's happening. So if you guys are looking for somebody, if you're having foundation issues or roofing issues, please reach out to Reagan. But most of the time on a daily basis, I work with Realtors and buyers when they are trying to purchase a house, or even we do refinances, too, obviously. And there can be issues. Sometimes we get appraisals back if somebody sees something that causes a problem.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:15:17 to 00:15:31

But this is one of the biggest purchases of someone's life. Like it's a major transaction. Right, right. And the very first thing that most buyers have to get when they purchase a new home get under contract is a home inspection. Right.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:15:31 to 00:16:12

And that's where a lot of this stuff kind of often comes know or at least gets indicated to some extent in the beginning saying, hey, there might be an issue here, there might be an issue there, especially in North Texas, because foundation seems to be something that's pretty common, very common. Foundation issues here seem to happen quite a bit. But from your point of view as a contractor and as a roof guy and a foundation guy, when you hear from home inspectors or when you get a home inspection report from somebody, what kind of stuff are you looking for there? What should they notice when someone comes across, says, hey, here's your report, what are we looking for? Yeah.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:16:13 to 00:16:48

I guess on our end, if the home inspector says he's going to recommend a professional to further evaluate, or if he sees an issue with the roof, unless they've been in foundation repair before or they've been in the roofing industry before, they're usually going to leave it pretty vague and say, have it checked out. They got to cover themselves, which is smart. Yeah, that's what I do too. But especially on the foundation side, it's a little more technical. They can miss stuff just not being negligent, really, because a home can start to tilt before it starts deflecting, so it'll hide itself.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:16:48 to 00:17:14

You won't have a major deflection point or settlement crack running through the brick on the outside. That just screams repair me. Right. The whole structure could be tilting as a whole until it gets really bad and then it starts to show up. So if you have the home inspected in that time, the home inspector may not see anything and say everything looks good, but I have seen a lot of them are running zip levels now, which really isn't a bad thing.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:17:14 to 00:17:20

I've had a few lately. What's that? What's a zip level? A zip level is what we measure the foundation with. So it's kind of like a fancy water level.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:17:20 to 00:17:35

It's in a yellow case and it's got a digital box. And in the cord there's oil and gas and it's calibrated to read out the elevations. Is it really long or is it. Short or very long? You can get I think the shortest cord is 75ft.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:17:35 to 00:17:56

Okay. Because you got to measure over a. Long space the whole downstairs of the house, right. Including the garage. Some homes are really long too, some of these other neighborhoods, but it'll read out the elevations of the slab in plus or minus tenths of an inch relative to a zero point that you set.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:17:56 to 00:18:08

Right. Which a slab will usually we set towards the garage grade beam if it's close to the center of the house or just close to the center of the slab. Because slab distress is going to start outside in every time. Unless you have a plumbing leak. Got you.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:18:08 to 00:18:20

Or a bad drain problem or something like that. Got you. So the bigger issues, the way you measure it from you're looking at the center of the house because you're assuming that's the most structurally sound at that point. Yeah. Like the closest true zero we could get.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:18:20 to 00:18:29

Right. Which when you measure the slab it's not going to be all zeros. They're not poured 100% level. There's a variance. There a tolerance for engineering standards.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:18:29 to 00:18:54

So as long as you're within that tolerance and you don't see any major distress, then you can say that everything looks good. So usually, obviously, buyers are going to get an inspection and they're going to have someone come in and look at this stuff and kind of indicate to them whether or not they think there could be a problem, like you said, because I've seen them before too. Buyers and agents will send us home inspection reports all the time. And I'm like, I actually don't want to see that. That'd be great.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:18:55 to 00:19:11

But we get them a lot. So that's a pretty typical part of the process. But what would you say if someone was selling their house like they're about to list it for sale? Is this the type of stuff that you think is necessary? From your point of view?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:19:11 to 00:19:27

Would you say it's necessary to maybe get some of this stuff checked out ahead of time before you list, just to kind of protect yourself? That's not a bad idea. Be preventative and have it looked at. And then you don't have any major surprises. But it's very rare that you're going to have a major surprise in foundation repair.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:19:27 to 00:19:36

For the most part, it'll show itself. Sure. You're usually going to know unless you've got severe tilt, which is about the rarest thing we run into. But it is out there. Sure.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:19:36 to 00:20:01

But it's usually caused by we find it a lot around bodies of water. If you live around a lake, you got to be a little more careful because you can catch it earlier. Not so much trees causing tilt, they can cause bad settlement and upheaval from the roots, forcing the slab up. But your sewer line, if you get a bad sewer leak, that's not going to show up at the meter. I've seen people let them go for.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:20:01 to 00:20:15

Years and just have no idea. Right. And what it does is the clay is going to expand until it hits its plasticity limit. It can't take on any more water. And then at that point, everything under the house is going to turn into a swamp.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:20:15 to 00:20:31

And you may not see any signs of it outside. Got you. And so then the structure just kind of starts to sink. So when we measure it, you've got very low elevations on this end and extremely high elevations on this end. That's when it's tilted.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:20:31 to 00:20:45

Got you. It's about the only surprise you're going to run into. Most people know if they have a foundation problem or why. What is it about the soil or whatever up here in this area in particular. And I don't know if it's all over Texas or just North Texas, but.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:20:45 to 00:20:51

It'S most of Texas. It's most of Texas. What is it about the soil that causes these issues to come up? Is that why we don't have very many basements here. Yes, that is why.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:20:52 to 00:20:58

Okay. Now we do have basements. There are areas where you can build a basement here. It's just more few and far between. Right.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:20:58 to 00:21:05

There's a whole neighborhood of basements over by Martin High School that I didn't know existed. Is it really? Yeah. I've always loved a good basement. I'm a big fan of me, too.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:21:05 to 00:21:09

It's where you can have your man cave. That's right. Watch your games. Yes. That's.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:21:11 to 00:21:22

Where you take the girls downstairs. Get under the blanket. I got a budy of mine who is a loan officer in Tennessee, and he has a hilarious story about his daughter. They have a basement there. He goes down to peaks because everybody's got blankets.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:21:22 to 00:21:40

He's no, no, blankets are gone. Blankets gotta go. Blankets gotta go. So what is it about the soil here that causes the problems? We have a lot of high plasticity clay here, so it shrinks and swells very dramatically based on its moisture content or lack thereof.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:21:40 to 00:21:58

Okay. So we have varying degrees all over the metroplex. The second most expansive soil profile here is Houston black clay. But that's prominently what we have that causes the most issues because it's all over the place. Gotcha Carrollton's made of it, plano's made of it.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:21:59 to 00:22:23

Rowlette, most of rowlett up and down the tollway in Dallas, behind the Parks Mall in Arlington. This is just some of the hottest pockets that are out there, but it is all over the place in DFW. Now there's other soil profiles where the plasticity is not as high, but it's still very expansive. Right. I mean, you can have issues anywhere, but there's a lot of areas.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:22:23 to 00:22:30

You've been to my parents house. Their plasticity is in the teens. It's not really even considered expensive. Not that big of a deal. Yeah, it's like sand.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:22:30 to 00:22:36

That's why they've never had any cracks in their house. They get zero movement. Right. It just moisture just passes through. It like sand.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:22:36 to 00:22:53

So is part of the issue, too, that we run into. Do you get a lot of calls when we've had a big drought or if we've had a lot of rain because the weather does so much to the soil around these homes that that's when you start seeing problems pop up. Definitely. Yeah. Well, yeah, like this last summer was a major outlier.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:22:54 to 00:23:03

For as long as I've been doing this, I've only seen that kind of movement two or three times. Really? So I'm trying to think, was the summer dry or was it very hot? Very dry. Okay.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:23:03 to 00:23:10

We didn't get a lot of rain. I can't remember what I had for breakfast. Yeah, we were seeing very fast movement, very fast settlement. Really? Yeah.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:23:10 to 00:23:23

So maybe get to this a little bit later. But I am curious while I'm thinking about it. So you hear about people saying you need to water your foundation. What does that really mean, are you standing out there with a hose, like, literally spraying it down? What are you doing?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:23:23 to 00:23:43

I mean, you could yeah, but what they're saying is you're trying to fight that settlement. So if we're going through a summer like that, you're trying to mitigate the retraction of the clay. Okay. So you're trying to keep it more hydrated so it doesn't shrink as much because that'll cause settlement. So they're putting like a soaker hose or something like that.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:23:43 to 00:23:49

Got you. Or some people have like if you. Have flower beds around the house and you water those anyway, you're kind of doing that anyway, right? Yeah. Okay.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:23:49 to 00:24:14

Underground drip irrigation, that kind of thing. But yeah, you're keeping the clay more. Hydrated, so it's more do you run into any issues? At my house, for example, we have a pool in the backyard, and initially they had built a wooden deck that would attach the house, but it had been torn out since we had moved in. And then we kind of redid the backyard and we put decking in all the way around the house.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:24:14 to 00:24:30

So now there's some sort of basically a concrete overlay all along the backside of our house. So there's not any water that's getting into there necessarily. I mean, maybe there is and I. Don'T know, but you'll get some subsurface water migrating through, you're getting no surface water. Right.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:24:30 to 00:24:48

So does that cause issues or because it's covered you doesn't suffer the same level of drought that like, an exposed ground would? Exactly. Okay. So that's why you don't see it as dramatically. It'll cause a little bit because you're not getting the moisture there that you were before, but you're also not getting the retraction that you normally would.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:24:48 to 00:25:02

Yes. Right. That's why you want to run your soaker hose early in the morning, late in the evening, when you're going to do it, and through a drought like that two, three times a week. But that way it doesn't just evaporate immediately. Got you like this.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:25:02 to 00:25:10

Last summer, had my birthday party at our house. We did like a murder mystery. Oh, did you? Yeah, it was crazy. Had to turn our house into a tiki bar.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:25:10 to 00:25:25

Okay. And we put a big pool. It was like a ten foot by, like, seven foot pool just for decoration. But I threw the hose in it while I was decorating other stuff, and I forgot about it and it overflowed. Like the whole backyard and the day.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:25:25 to 00:25:32

Of the party, the day of the. Hours before the party started. That sounds like something that I would 100% do. I know. No doubt about.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:25:32 to 00:25:38

Well, no one's going to be able to hang out in the backyard. It's going to be able to hang out on the back patio. It was gone in 30 minutes. It was just bone dry. 30 minutes?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:25:39 to 00:25:44

Yeah. Oh, wow. The whole backyard was flooded. I do that. So we have to fill up.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:25:44 to 00:26:01

Our pool from time to time because it drains, but we have, like, a little knob or whatever, and my wife and I do it all the time. We turn on the faucet and it pours it in there, and then we go do stuff and I come back after work or whatever, and there's like a river of water running down in my backyard. That stupid thing on again. Okay. Just a little sidebar here.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:26:01 to 00:26:14

So you did a murder mystery at your house. Yes. So did you hire a company to come in and do that, or did you all just come up with it yourself? No, you order it from a company, order the package and you assign the characters. Okay.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:26:14 to 00:26:23

It was a blast. It was a ton of work. That sounds yeah, it sounds like a lot you're putting into that. It was a ton of work. How many people were involved?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:26:23 to 00:26:30

I think we had, like, 25. Okay. 30. Yeah, maybe that's a lot. We had one of the smaller packages.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:26:30 to 00:26:39

But really they come in bigger than that. Yeah, they did. Yeah. You could add more on there. So I guess they give you a story.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:26:39 to 00:26:49

You're the only one that knows, I'm assuming, right. My girlfriend did all that. So you had no idea you knew what you were doing, but you didn't know what the answer was. Right, I didn't know. I ended up being the killer.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:26:49 to 00:27:00

Of course I had no idea. And I missed it on the thing. I still didn't know at the end. Like, hey, dummy, you're the one that did this. That's hilarious.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:27:00 to 00:27:08

I didn't even know that that was a thing. Oh, yeah. We went to one. We went to one and had a blast. I've been the idea I've been to one.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:27:08 to 00:27:26

I can't remember if it was in Dallas or Fort, where we went to a place and it was know in a restaurant or built like they serve dinner and you do the whole, like, we did that, but I didn't know you could do it at your you. Know, do it at your house. You get all these decorations. We ordered a ton of stuff off Amazon. We made it more work than it had to be, I guess.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:27:26 to 00:27:30

Sure. Yeah. But you wanted to be fun. Yeah, it worked. It did make it more fun.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:27:32 to 00:27:40

Have you ever seen that? I think it's called knives out. You know that movie? And they have the one that's the onion, glass onion, yes. Did you watch that?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:27:40 to 00:27:57

I've seen them both. Okay. Yeah, that's basically what that obviously there's more to it than on that movie, but that's kind of what they were doing. I mean, maybe not at the you didn't have your own private island level. It was fun getting the characters and then everybody did such a good job of dressing up and being the character at the party.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:27:57 to 00:28:15

That was a big part of the fun. Yeah. You get a few drinks and folks and everybody likes to have a good time. All right. So if I'm a homeowner or let's say I'm looking at homes and I'm shopping for houses and I'm going through especially these days because actually it's crazy, buyers have a little bit more.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:28:17 to 00:28:41

I guess I would. Call it not power necessarily, but they certainly have a little more leverage than they normally did, just because now it's starting to shift a little bit. But for the last, I don't know, six months or so, there's been more sellers than buyers because everybody was terrified of interest rates and rates have come down a little bit. So that's a good thing. So now you're starting to see more buyers getting more and more buyers getting into the market to start purchasing stuff.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:28:41 to 00:28:55

So now you're getting into a little bit more competition on properties. It's kind of starting to come up. I've had first time in a while, I've had a couple of buyers that put in offers and lost out. That happened in four or five months just because they have other people searching for houses now. So there's a shortage.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:28:55 to 00:29:35

But if I'm looking for a house and I'm a buyer, or if I'm a seller trying to sell my house, what kind of stuff can I look for? Just with the eyeball test to give me an idea that, okay, maybe this is something I want to get checked out, because especially from a seller's point of view, and I think a lot of any agent that would watch this would understand that. If you're selling your house and you find out that you have foundation issues in the process of selling it, meaning the buyer gets a structural engineer or somebody comes out and looks at it, because foundation, if you don't understand it, it scares people. They're like, oh, the house is going to fall apart. And they don't feel like they have anybody they can trust because it's an unlicensed profession.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:29:36 to 00:29:42

Who's going to be coming over to your house and telling you you need $40,000 worth of foundation? Oh, yeah.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:29:45 to 00:30:07

On the seller thing, again, what happens to buyers a lot of times is if they say they have foundation, then you'll lose that buyer, they may go away and go find something else. Right, so if I'm a buyer or. Seller, because if they don't understand it, it may scare them. Yeah, absolutely. What can I look for to least give me an indication of there might be an issue and then if I think that there could be, then what would the next step be?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:30:07 to 00:30:29

Yeah, well, the basic things would be cracks through the brick, cracks in the drywall, in the interior. Some of the things you can look at that may be a better indicator. One of the things that we look for and home inspectors look for are the fascia trim boards where they meet in the corners right above the masonry. Yeah. Above the garage or whatever, where it kind of connects.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:30:29 to 00:30:37

Yeah. Every corner of the outside of the house outside of the slab. When it drops, it'll drop like that. Okay. So it'll kick those boards apart.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:30:37 to 00:30:50

Okay. So you can kind of see it's not 100% like reading it like a book, but you can tell if it's dropped or not. If it heaves, it'll heave back. So you might see a gap there. Okay.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:30:50 to 00:31:10

So the downspout may need an extension on it or you may have a drainage problem. Is that more of like an initial indicator? Because I would think the crack in the brick will come, but it's going to come a little bit later than some of the other stuff will start, right? Yeah. Well, you may even see something hairline before you see you may even see something in the mortar before you start to see something go through the brick right.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:31:10 to 00:31:23

And be like a large settlement deflection crack. Got you. But those are the first things we all look for. You can separation at the windows or. The door sticking thing that you hear about all the time.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:31:23 to 00:31:46

That's a sign of movement. Okay. If that's all you're seeing, most likely you don't have any problems. You may need to look at adjusting the gutters or adding gutters, or you may just have a little bit of a drainage issue where you get more movement on that side if that's all it is, is doors sticking or changing from season to season, but you have no significant distress. Very.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:31:46 to 00:31:58

Most likely you don't have a foundation problem. Right. It could be something else settling or whatever. Yeah, just movement. So you may get a lot of water on that side of the house and the rainy season.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:31:58 to 00:32:14

Then in the summer, it dries up, so it drops a little more. Obviously you want to try and minimize that as much as possible because that is where foundation problems start a lot of the time. Got you. If that's all you're seeing at that point, you probably don't have a foundation issue. So the issues come into play a little bit more as it kind of rises and falls.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:32:14 to 00:32:47

So you have a couple of seasons where it's the drought and it starts to fall and then it comes in and rains and then it raises again. And now you're kind of putting all this pressure of this thing moving back and forth until eventually it causes an issue. Yeah, you can get soil erosion, too. So the extra one water that you're getting on that side of the house, it can start to slowly wash away the soil and you'll see that start to come down on the slab line, and then that can lose support and then you could need piers. So there's a lot of different ways that it starts and it happens, but just keeping all that as consistent as possible throughout the year is the best thing you can do.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:32:47 to 00:33:02

But if you do have keeping the. Soil consistent around the house yeah. The moisture content of the soil is as consistent as possible. Got you. The more you can minimize that differentiation and the swelling and the retraction and that's important in those high plasticity areas.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:33:02 to 00:33:15

Got you. Some people don't have to worry about it as much. It is a lot about what you're sitting on and how it's going to respond to it. So my wife and I bought our first house in Arlington over offshorewood, over by the lake or whatever. Yeah.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:33:15 to 00:33:32

And when we bought it, we had it for, I don't know, crazy enough, we bought it for $130,000. It was 1800 square foot house. Our interest rate at the time was like six and a half percent. But this was a nice house in the middle of Arlington, nice neighborhood, and it was 130 grand. It was great.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:33:32 to 00:34:07

Now, this is right before the market crashed, but even then we bought it in four or three, I think, and then in eight, everything came crashing down. And I think we ended up selling our house for like 135 the following year, like in nine or 2010. So we didn't hardly lose any. Even with the massive fall off that happened, we didn't hardly lose anything. But when we went to sell it, our first buyer came in and said they got an inspection done and the inspector came in and said there was foundation problems.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:34:08 to 00:34:30

And I don't know, because at the time I wasn't in the business and neither was my wife's a realtor, so she wasn't in the business either. So we didn't know what the hell we were doing. And all we knew was that my mom was actually the realtor, and we knew that somebody said the house had foundation issues. So the first thing we did was we called. Who was it?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:34:30 to 00:34:44

I'm trying to think of a company. We ended up having allpro come out later, but there was another company that we had initially, and I can't remember the name of it, but this lady firm up here. No? Okay. This lady showed up and she was probably in her 50s.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:34:44 to 00:35:07

She looked like a realtor, like she had at the time. She had all these bracelets and big earrings and big hair and the whole thing. And she's just like, how are you guys doing? She's coming in and measuring everything and chitchatting with, this is a sweet lady, she's really nice. So she comes in, measures everything, leaves the next day we get an email from her, says we needed 20 peers.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:35:07 to 00:35:25

This is 1700 square foot house. We needed 20 peers. And I think it was going to cost us like ten or twelve grand, something like that at that time. And we're both in our early mid 20s, just barely getting by or whatever, like, what the hell, how are we. Going to sell our house?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:35:26 to 00:35:48

And again, you don't know any better. So at the time, we were trying to figure out, okay, what are we going to do? And I don't remember how we eventually got to like, can we just call somebody else? So we ended up calling another company. Guy came out a little less friendly, nice, whatever, but he's walked through measuring some stuff, kind of chitchat a little bit, but nothing crazy.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:35:48 to 00:35:57

And then he was all done. And he's like, you're fine. Yeah. And I'm like, Wait a minute, what do you mean we're fine? He's like, yeah, you got a little bit of settlement.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:35:57 to 00:36:02

You got this that he kind of gave us. I don't remember all details of it or whatever, but he was just about, yeah, you're good.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:36:05 to 00:36:14

We were kind of like, Are you sure? And he's like, yeah. And so, again, we don't know any better. Right? So at that point, we had one person telling us we needed 20 peers and was going to cost us $12,000.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:36:15 to 00:36:43

And then we had another guy telling us we didn't need any peers and didn't have to pay for anything. Well, obviously, I'm like the guy that said we didn't need anything, of course. But my mom at the time, the buyer might not exactly, because we did have some cracks and a few little things in the drywall and stuff like that, which is what caused the inspector to question it. So my mom ended up suggesting we get a structural engineer's report just so we could have it. So when buyers would come in and see it, they got it.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:36:43 to 00:36:52

And ultimately the engineers report came in. It cost like $600, but they came back and it was fine. We didn't need anything. $600 well spent. Absolutely.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:36:54 to 00:37:12

I kind of know why, but from your point of view, why is there such and I hear these stories all the time, which is one of the reasons I had my sister call you, because I think they had somebody come out originally and told them they needed. Some kind of crazy amount of years. Okay, that sounds familiar. And she's north Arlington kind of over there in that area. Yeah, I just forgot about that.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:37:13 to 00:37:28

Um, so that's why I had her call you. But why? Is it just being crooked? Is that the whole thing? Or is it I don't want to say that excuse people of that, but I do know it goes on.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:37:28 to 00:37:48

I see it every day. I've even seen engineers have different opinions. Sure, they're not usually that drastically different, right? But I've seen them have different ideas. I've even had to tell them, hey, we'd rather do this because we have more of a real world application and just talk it over with them and they agree.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:37:48 to 00:37:55

Or you can get them to kind of go your way, but not usually something like that. You shouldn't have 20 peers and no peers.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:37:58 to 00:38:23

Is it like inexperienced of the person. Going after sometimes and sometimes they're not trained right as much they should be before they're thrown out. You know, I feel like I was lucky because I started PermaPure and they do train the guys really well. But I've seen other companies around here run into their stuff and it just seems to me like it was more bad training versus trying to con somebody. Sure.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:38:23 to 00:38:29

But I know that stuff does go it is, it is a very valid concern. There is no.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:38:32 to 00:38:50

I mean obviously I guess that's always been the case. But why do you think that is? Texas likes if you want to start a business tomorrow, they want you to. But I mean it's a structural repair. You can ruin someone's house and I've seen people do don't what's that conversation.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:38:50 to 00:39:06

Like when you go to someone's house that had all this work done and then for whatever reason they call you out and you're like, man, you didn't need all this. Yeah, it depends. Sometimes you want to kind of lessen. You don't want to tell them because. You don't want to make them feel dumb.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:39:06 to 00:39:18

It's like you said, how would they know? Right? Like you said, if you don't do this every day, why would you? Right, but still you're going to feel not going to feel good. No, but I have seen it.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:39:18 to 00:39:54

People spent 20 something thousand dollars with the company and I look at the pictures of the distress and the old sitemap and I just would have put extensions on the downspouts that kind of. Stuff is the foundation business side of things. Not too dissimilar from the roofing side of things because I've got some other friends and stuff that do roofing and I hear all the time about especially when there's bad storms or there's a rash of storms. You see all these companies just come flying in these fly by nights that never been in business or was one company before and then closed down. I mean does that happen a lot on the foundation side too?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:39:55 to 00:40:10

Yeah, closed down, yeah, for sure. And a lot of that is because they'll charge it really is. You get what you pay for. That cliche saying. But also there are foundation repairs that are way overpriced in this Metroplex.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:40:10 to 00:40:24

So I'm not saying you find a good price. It's too good to be true. Sure you can find a good price. The guys that are on the very low end of the spectrum, they don't install the concrete pierce right. And they're not going to last.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:40:24 to 00:40:39

They don't go deep enough. They can't afford to. They're charging less than my cost to do one of them. But yeah, you will run into that. And so as they do that, their warranty calls and everything are going to build up very quickly.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:40:40 to 00:40:47

So they usually last about two to three years and then they change their. Name and then they show up as. And all their warranties disappear. When they change their name. Right.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:40:47 to 00:41:07

So that is one of the things that happens in foundation repair. Yeah. So what would you suggest to somebody if they think you don't always want to go right to a structural engineer? Because if you don't have any issues, you can pay $600 to do that or whatever it costs these days. What's the protocol?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:41:07 to 00:41:19

Obviously call you 100%, make sure they call you. But if someone doesn't know you or I didn't see this. Do you call out multiple companies? Do you just go look at reviews? Do you see how long they've been in business?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:41:20 to 00:41:35

What's some good I would ask. I mean, Realtors are always a great yes, if you know any Realtors, ask them. They know because you burn a Realtor and they talk and you will never hear from them or that brokerage ever again. That's a good point. They're a great one.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:41:35 to 00:41:56

Home inspectors are a great one because they're not going to put their reputation on the line for someone who's going to do things like that. Yeah, and it's not just the company. There's good companies out there that it's going to depend on the rep that comes out, too. Right. And unless they're overseeing everything he's doing in the field, he can write you up 20 peers.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:41:56 to 00:42:03

Sure. When someone else would tell you you need zero. Yeah. And that company may not endorse that. They may not be a bad company.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:42:03 to 00:42:36

They just had a guy. Well, I use the analogy a lot because we same thing with mortgage banks, the same thing with Realtors working for Keller Williams or Remax or Know. I use a school analogy as like you can go to Harvard Business School and you can have the worst professor on the planet and have a terrible experience at Harvard. Or you can go to TCJC or TCC or whatever it's called these days, and you can have a fantastic professor and learn a know, because it's not always the institution, it's more about the individual that you deal with. Right, exactly.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:42:36 to 00:42:56

And it can be the exact same. So yeah, you can get different opinions from the same company if they send out two different guys. Yeah, that's a good point. They probably get some varying insight as to what you're doing there. So tell me a little bit about what the work actually looks like.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:42:56 to 00:43:24

So when you go out and you recognize somebody needs some work done, I'm. Assuming. Just based on my experience with you and whatnot, that you're going to do what needs to be done, but you're not going to overdo. It because you don't want to put is there such a thing where if you add too many piers, you could have a problem later on or anything like that? Yeah, I mean, you could especially if you're not installing them properly.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:43:24 to 00:43:50

The concrete ones, we did steel on your lake house because we could have done concrete on your lake house, but living that close to a body of water, it's just not that it's not long term. It's not the best option because the. Concrete erodes essentially well, you just get. A lot more moisture in the soil, so those would probably settle over time, and you'd need adjustments, or they could just completely fail after a while. So you have concrete peers and steel piers.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:43:50 to 00:44:06

Is there any other material that you all use for that stuff, or is that it? No, I mean, there's different forms of concrete piers, but yeah, it's either concrete or steel. Okay. And how do you determine how low you have to go and where your access points? I mean, I know you guys dug a hole like a mole under the house.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:44:06 to 00:44:27

You're down there cranking stuff up. So what's the whole process look like? So it's a two part process, and this is concrete and steel. You excavate to get underneath the grade beam. Or if you're doing an interior pier, you tunnel or you break through the slab and get to where you can get to the cross beam or just on the outside of the grade beam, the thick part of the concrete of the slab.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:44:29 to 00:44:45

We don't have to dig all the way down to how deep we want the pier unless it's a poured pier. And we have to do those for certain instances. But normal, like press piling or steel or concrete press piling, you're going to. Use push it down there, basically, yeah. We use a power team.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:44:46 to 00:45:03

It's a hydraulic press. So it uses the weight of the slab and presses down that piling into the soil. Okay. Once you got that press, put another one on top, the steel interlock, and then you press it down. You just keep pressing till you hit bedrock, really, or the restrictive layer, whatever's down there.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:45:03 to 00:45:30

With concrete, you're restricted with your soil compaction and how much pressure you build up on the bottom of that piling. At some point, we're going to hit it depends on different areas and different soils, how deep this is going to be. But as soon as we have to up the jack, I mean, up the PSI on the press over 10,000 PSI, we're going to stop on most residential slabs. Far enough in your well. Yeah, and we don't want to damage the house.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:45:30 to 00:45:42

Right. And some of them we can't get to 10,000 PSI. A lot of it depends on the pore. I mean, just like there's shoddy foundation repair, there's shoddy slab pores. You'd be surprised how many of them we get into.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:45:42 to 00:45:51

And there's not even rebar. There's chicken wire or there's no rebar at all, really. And they pour the whole thing like a patio, like four inches thick. Really? Are these, like, older houses or are.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:45:51 to 00:45:57

These even newer homes? Yeah, it's usually older. Okay. But yeah, we run into them. It's not that uncommon, really.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:45:57 to 00:46:12

So they're not using rebar inside the foundation at all. You're getting into some kind of other wireless. Wow, that's crazy. Is that like a certain time period? Some of those homes are built, like, in the or is it just seen.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:46:12 to 00:46:17

A lot in the early 80s? Definitely. Seventy s. Fifty s. Late fifty s.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:46:17 to 00:46:24

Sixty s. So the further back you go, the more likely yeah. That they could have cut corners. Right. Wow.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:46:24 to 00:46:27

I didn't know that. Chicken wire. Really? Chicken wire? Yeah.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:46:27 to 00:46:36

I've replaced a bunch of driveways in Mansfield and some of the nicest neighborhoods. Mansfield newer neighborhoods. Really? There's just chicken wire.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:46:38 to 00:46:52

Are some of these houses, like, custom builds? Are they, like, from actual builders? We don't name I don't want to get specific on the neighborhood. Yeah, no late 90s builds. I think most of them were really that I've seen off of.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:46:52 to 00:47:01

Is that just builders trying to cut corners, or was that just a method that they thought this would work? Absolutely. Really? Yeah. For anyone who ever gets their roof replaced with us.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:47:01 to 00:47:17

That's one of the reasons that's in our terms and conditions for the driveway, for our dump truck, because we have no idea what they poured the driveway, and we have had our dump trucks, like, crack a driveway. Yeah. Not fracture it, but wow. I didn't even realize that. Yeah.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:47:17 to 00:47:36

I guess with your you put something heavy enough on that driveway and it's going to give if it wasn't built out correctly. Yeah, if it's a three inch pour with chicken wire. A lot of structural integrity to it. No. So what was surprising to me about the work is it really doesn't I mean, obviously it depends on how many peers you're doing, but it doesn't take that long.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:47:36 to 00:47:45

I think you guys knocked everything out in like a day or two at the most. Yeah. Yours wasn't a huge job. I can't remember how many it was. I think it was only like, I want to say like five or six maybe.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:47:45 to 00:47:52

It was pretty small. Yeah. Depending on how deep we have to go, that could be a half day job. Yeah. So you can knock that stuff out pretty fast.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:47:52 to 00:48:03

Yeah. How many crews do you guys have? We have three in Dallas, Fort Worth, but we're also covering San Antonio, Houston, and Austin. Oh, wow. On the foundation repair side.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:48:03 to 00:48:09

So those guys live down there, or do they travel? No, they live there. They live there. Yeah. We were doing that for a while.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:48:09 to 00:48:19

Yeah. Our Fort Worth Curries weren't real happy. With you doing that. Figure that out for them. So how long do the repairs usually hold up?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:48:19 to 00:48:31

What's the timeline on those? And I know, of course, it varies or whatever, but generally speaking, shouldn't really. So any pier that we drive into the ground, we give a lifetime transferable warranty. Okay. Concrete or steel?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:48:31 to 00:48:43

Doesn't matter. The steel piers are about as permanent a solution as you can give for settlement. Because I'm a dummy. When you say transferable warranty, what do you mean transferable? Like if you sell the house okay.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:48:43 to 00:48:49

So you can transfer it to the new owner. Right, okay. Yeah. It stays with the structure. Got you.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:48:49 to 00:48:56

Do most companies offer that transfer? Yeah, they should. They should. I've seen some where there's a ten year warranty. A five year warranty?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:48:56 to 00:49:07

Runaway. Yeah. You do not want to if that's all the fake they have in their installs, then you can find better. So steel piers should last forever? Essentially.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:49:07 to 00:49:15

Yeah. You're going to have to have like a massive plumbing leak or something. Right. Because they're all the way down on the restrictive layer and sitting on the grid. There's really nowhere for them to go.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:49:15 to 00:49:41

Got you. And then the concrete ones maybe have a little bit lower lifespan, but not. No, I mean, honestly, we get almost no warranty calls on our concrete pierce. If you install them right, if you get close to 10,000 PSI, then it's very unlikely you're going to have issues now because they're not driven to the restrictive layer and you're restricted by that. Driven to refusal is what we call it.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:49:41 to 00:50:04

If you can hit close to 10,000 PSI, you drive it to refusal. That's what makes them last. But the plumbing leaks, drainage, stuff like that is very important for them to stay consistent and stay long term. But we do look at that stuff before we write the repair. So we're not just going to go throw a bunch of concrete piers in an area it's got a drainage problem where we know they're going to fail and not bring it up to you.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:50:04 to 00:50:25

Right, okay. That's. Just going to ask when you guys go do the kind of do the survey of the place and figure out what exactly you're going to do, does it also come with kind of like a prescription to say, hey, look, once we do this, these are some things you need to fix or else you're going to have continue to have issues? And that's for us because they're going to be life no matter what. Yeah, we're going to tell you that's got to be done.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:50:27 to 00:50:41

What are some of the things like. You said, but it'd be super annoying to a homeowner if we didn't tell them. And then they're having issues with those periods they shouldn't have and they've spent all this money. So things like downspouts, being in a certain location, that's a problem or can be. You said the soil.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:50:42 to 00:51:00

What else do you see that's typical around a house that can cause those kind of problems? Retaining walls. If you've got a retaining wall that is starting to fail, the railroad tie retaining walls go out. After a while, they rot out, I. Guess that your house is sitting on.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:51:00 to 00:51:13

How far out usually would you it just depends. But yeah, if it's supporting the land that your house is sitting on, then. It's pretty crucial. Got you. Sometimes we'll steel pier it and just bypass them.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:51:13 to 00:51:26

Got you. If you want to put off replacing that retaining wall, it's not a safety hazard. Right. Because once we still pier that part of the house, it's not sitting on the soil anymore anyways. Right.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:51:27 to 00:51:52

But we won't even offer concrete in those instances if we don't know for a fact we can hit the restrictive layer. How would somebody correct something if they actually did have some level of drainage issues? Because we had another house over off of St. Martin here in Arlington. That on one side of it, for whatever reason, just we always had standing know, whenever something would run it because the neighborhood was kind of on a slope, we were on the bottom end of it.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:51:52 to 00:52:06

And there was one side. There was just like even even after two or three days or a week of no rain, there would still be some standing water there. Do you add soil? Do you put in French drains? Yeah, there's a number of things you could do.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:52:07 to 00:52:22

Depend on what you want. You can do a berm to kind of redirect the water, but yeah, I wouldn't even say French drain. If you're dealing with that surface water and that's what's bothering you and it's not causing foundation, the subsurface water is not really a concern. You can just do a surface drain system. Got you.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:52:22 to 00:52:51

And put some catch basins in that area, let that water drain in there, and then pump it to the street with a sump pump if you need to. Got you. The French drain system is going to be more for foundation things. You've got so much water coming that it's causing upheaval on one side of the house. That's what the French drain does, like a surface drain doesn't, is it catches that subsurface water migrating through the soil so it'll catch that stuff as well, so it can prevent upheaval.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:52:51 to 00:53:16

The clay underneath the house is getting less moisture, so it's not swelling as much throughout the year. Right. So I know this is a hard question to answer because there's a lot of variables, I'm sure, but generally speaking, on an average of let's say you're doing a medium small size job. Medium sized job, big size job. What is someone looking at the type of cost that would be involved in doing these type of things?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:53:17 to 00:53:28

Yeah, I mean, it can be a very wide range. Sure. Because I don't think ours was very expensive at all. I think for the five or however many peers it was, I mean, it was less than $5,000. It wasn't too bad.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:53:28 to 00:53:35

Yeah. And I can't remember, but I don't think we needed a permit in the city you were in. Yeah. Probably not in Maybank. Yeah.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:53:36 to 00:53:50

Okay. But yeah, I try and keep our prices very fair and competitive. I mean, our steel piers, those can range anywhere from $500 to $1,500. Apiece per in the market here. We do them for six.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:53:51 to 00:54:01

Our concrete peers were at 390. Had to raise the prices on those for the first time in forever. Just concrete went up. Yeah, everything went up. Yeah, everything went up.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:54:01 to 00:54:12

How long ago was that? That was just a few months ago. Really? I guess maybe it was about six months ago now. I had to do that maybe a little longer, but I hadn't raised those prices in forever.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:54:12 to 00:54:35

I know our competitors have, but we primarily do work in real estate. That's where a lot of our marketing goes. That's where a lot of our foundation repair we do is done in real estate transactions. So I try and keep them fair. We're usually trying to be more around structured and around that we have more similar pricing.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:54:36 to 00:54:47

Does insurance come into play here at all, ever? It doesn't seem like I can't remember it ever being a thing, but there's not a lot of policies that would cover. Very rare. It's very rare. Very rare.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:54:47 to 00:54:53

Yeah. Most of the time it's out of pocket. That you're. Yeah, I have heard more. I have heard there's been some companies come into the market that have been offering it.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:54:53 to 00:55:26

State Farm used to have coverage that they called foundation coverage, but all it really covered was the repairing of the slab after the plumbing leak was fixed, gotcha even if that plumbing leak caused foundation problems that wasn't going to be covered. They weren't going to do so it. Wasn'T foundation repair of a is that a nationwide thing, to your knowledge, or is it just a Texas thing about insurance? Because Texas being so having so many. Issues, it's kind of like on the roofing side where we get so many they're now the age of your roof.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:55:26 to 00:55:41

They're switching to like a that's the industry. This it's kind of the same thing. It's so prominent here. I mean, they've never covered it right in two decades I've been in this. But they never covered it.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:55:41 to 00:56:31

And they never will, I don't think. Well, at least on the mortgage side of things, because from our side, whenever we have somebody that comes through and says we'll get an appraiser because again, we don't always see the inspections, nor do we really want to, but when the appraiser sends a report back to us, it'll say, same thing, might have foundation issues. They'll say, hey, we want a structural engineer report to verify that it doesn't, whatever. And if it does, a lot of times we can do what's called an escrow holdback. I don't know if you're familiar with those, where basically tell me if you all do this, but essentially you get the bid or you present the bid, and then if it falls within a certain price range because there are limits to how much you can do with those.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:56:33 to 00:56:49

Then that money will be put in escrow at the title company and held paid for by the seller or the buyer. Because you can do it either way. Right. And then after the loan closes or after the property contract is finished, then you guys will come in and do the work and then you'll be paid out by the title company. Right.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:56:49 to 00:56:58

We do that all the time. That happened a lot. Most of our foundation repair is fund at closing. Yes. But the escrow putting into escrow and doing it after closing, we've done a lot of that too.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:56:58 to 00:57:16

And with the market just a year two ago, so crazy. That was like one of the first times we've ever had so many where the buyer was paying for the foundation repair and we'd do that after they closed on the house. I had never really seen that be like a common thing. Yes. Because they had so many offers.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:57:16 to 00:57:29

They could just tell you to get lost and get someone else. Yes, but when they have 25 people offering on a house, they never run into those problems. Just say, Next one up it's as. Is, or else we're going to sell it to the next dude. Yeah.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:57:31 to 00:57:36

Those two years were insane. There was nothing normal about that. It was bananas.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:57:39 to 00:57:57

I'm glad it was great, but we needed to get back to some level of normalcy. Just hope it rebounds quicker sooner rather than later, obviously. Speaking of that, with real estate slowing down as it has, does that affect you guys? Do you all impact? That is a slowdown for you, too.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:57:57 to 00:58:09

Yeah, normally. Because I would imagine most of the time people figure out they have foundation issues is when they're trying to sell their house. Right? Yeah. I mean, that's one of the reasons we specialize in roofing and foundation repair.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:58:09 to 00:58:27

It's just kind of happened to do the two things. I didn't plan on doing real estate construction. It's just the two things that I knew the best, what they run into the most. But yeah, typically it would. But we were worried about it for COVID and everything and we just got busier.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:58:27 to 00:58:39

Oh, yeah. Well, COVID yeah, that was a whole other thing because then your people are just hanging around their house all day long figuring out like, what do we got to fix some stuff around here? I don't have anywhere to go. I don't have any activities planned, so I'm going to do some fixing. Right.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:58:39 to 00:58:43

Yeah. We haven't really felt it yet. Really? I don't know if we will. That's good.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:58:44 to 00:59:17

The thing about this area is DFW, especially because of our tax climate, because of the employers that are moving in here and all the the. I think during that two year period, we were like the second next to maybe Florida, we were the second largest state of influx of know the migration from other states, like they were coming into. Yeah. So that's why the real estate properties or the values just went through the roof because there was so much demand for it. I wonder where this specific metroplex was.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:59:17 to 00:59:35

I mean, Austin was way up there. It was one of the number one because people from California, they would go to Austin. But I think we were probably second know. I'm not sure where San Antonio and Houston fell into that. Uh, but it certainly had a big influx of people coming in and yeah.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:59:35 to 00:59:46

I definitely saw saw we had a lot of California buyers that we were looking at properties for. I bet they were freaking out, too. Because they always do on the foundation. You're like, oh, hang on, water my house.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 00:59:49 to 01:00:03

But it's good when you get to talk to them and kind of calm them down. Yes, I bet you can see the. Panic on their face. That's probably a big part of your job a little bit, is you're kind of like a psychologist to some extent, like, hey, look, this isn't that big of a deal. Well, they all think it's going to be like 10,000, $20,000.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:00:03 to 01:00:11

And then I tell them about jobs like yours where, hey, sometimes you just need five peers. It's not a big deal. Yeah, sometimes you need nothing. You just need gutters, right? Yeah.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:00:11 to 01:00:24

Sometimes you need a new roof. And if you need a new roof, that could be five or ten grand. If you need peers, it could be five or ten. It just depends on what it is. I'm curious how much panic you get from people.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:00:25 to 01:00:33

I would think it's pretty common because people just aren't the foundation of the house. Oh, my gosh. Right? You know what? I like those better.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:00:34 to 01:00:50

That might sound bad, but let me explain. I like those better than when I go to a house and they think they're just doing their due diligence and getting it checked out. And as I'm measuring, I'm finding that they have, like, major tilts. Right. I'm not even going to tell you what this costs.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:00:50 to 01:01:20

I'm going to tell you to get an engineer. I'd rather have someone that's nervous about it, and then I can kind of lower their anxiety versus be the one who provides all the anxiety, adds it to it. Have to do a lot of both. That's a pretty good tactic, actually. You said that where if you run into an issue on a property that's got some pretty based on your measurements is pretty significant, instead of you being the one going, hey, you're like, hey, let's get an engineer out here.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:01:20 to 01:01:44

Look at this. Because then at least you have not that you're not credible, but somebody with some sort of a license or whatever saying, hey, look, here's the problem. That is part of it, especially in a real estate transaction, because the other party doesn't know me from the con man that was doing it last year down the street. Right. But when I meet with homeowners, sometimes I'm going to peer the heck out of it when I find tilt.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:01:44 to 01:02:05

It's the only way I know how to fix it. An engineer may say, we can get away without doing this part. Sure. So it could just save them money, and I'd rather have an engineer's repair plan from the get go. I'll tell him what I think, and it's as possible he's going to appear the whole front half of the house or more.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:02:05 to 01:02:30

Right. So I'll prepare him for that. But then we're going to have to get an engineer's report anyways. Then we have one to go off from the get go, and it might even save them a little money. Well, it's kind of one of those things probably, too, where it's like you could go to a doctor that works at a university that spends all their time in a lab studying things under a microscope but never sees any patients, and they'll give you some kind of diagnosis.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:02:30 to 01:02:42

Or you can go see the doctor who actually sees patients every day and knows what works and what doesn't work. Well, I understand the recommendation from this dude, right. But he's the bookworm. Okay, here's how it works in practical reality, right? Yes.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:02:42 to 01:02:56

Do run into that every once in a while. Yeah. You get a little bit of and I'm sure it's probably something you have to overcome, too. It's like, look, I'm not trying to spend more of your money here, but I'm just telling you, unless you don't want us to come back out in two years or whatever, then probably need to fix this thing. Exactly.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:02:56 to 01:03:07

Yeah. Well, this has been great, man. I really appreciate we're at an hour already, so goes by fast. This is the most we've been able to speak since, like, 1999. Forever.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:03:07 to 01:03:17

I know. And we were chatting it up, and I realized when you got in, I was like, oh, crap, we got, like, 30 seconds. We got to get rolling. So I really appreciate you coming in. This has been awesome.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:03:17 to 01:03:37

Is there anything that you would like to say or just if you want anybody to know anything about all of this stuff that we talked about, just as, hey, make sure you do this or make sure you do that or anything like that you want to say before we go? Yeah, I mean, if you think you have a foundation problem, don't panic. Just call us. Let us come look at it. It may not be that big a deal.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:03:37 to 01:03:49

And if you're looking to buy, if there's any issues, definitely let us take a look at it. Any possible issues. Except for corner pops, because you don't. Have to pay for someone to come out. No, we do free inspections.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:03:49 to 01:04:03

Yeah, it's not like an engineer. We do free inspections, free estimates. So as a seller, that's probably not the worst thing in the world. If you're going to sell your house, you can have someone come out and do a free estimate free inspection on your roof and your foundation, and then you can say, hey, look, you're good to go. Sometimes it's not enough.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:04:04 to 01:04:09

I mean, some buyers are, to be honest. I'd probably be the same way. Yeah. We're going to have an engineer look at of course. Yeah.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:04:09 to 01:04:14

But at least you've had somebody that you feel pretty good about coming out and doing it.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:04:17 to 01:04:31

I think when it comes to stuff like this, especially because the normal consumer just this is the stuff we do. Nobody knows. I'm familiar with it to some extent, but just still, I'm barely scratching the surface on what this stuff is. Yeah. It's kind of like your industry.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:04:31 to 01:04:44

I know nothing about it. Right. I do know what I think you all are going to need and ask me for on my side. Well, it always comes down to me, just really and truly. It's kind of like your gut a little bit.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:04:44 to 01:04:59

It's like, okay, I talked to this person. I met them. We had a conversation. I got to kind of see who they were. Do I feel like this person is telling me the truth, or do I feel like I got a little fuzzy in my stomach that I don't know if I trust this guy 100% or this girl?

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:04:59 to 01:05:14

It's like they're giving me the weird vibe. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think it's important when you talk to somebody, if you feel good about what they're telling you and you feel like they communicate with you well, which you guys do a great job of, then you can feel pretty confident that you're getting taken care of. Yeah.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:05:15 to 01:05:33

But you know what? I've had that happen where I've come in and recommended a large repair, and the homeowner kind of went or thought they were going behind my back and got an engineer to come in and look at it and then let me know, hey, I had an engineer come look at it. He agrees with you. That kind of stuff, I think, is just a smart buyer. Yeah.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:05:33 to 01:05:37

That's what anyone should do. Really? Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't be offended by that? No, not at all.

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:05:37 to 01:05:50

Not at all. We got because if you know that if in your heart, you're doing the best job that you can do, and heck, if someone comes in and the engineer is like, well, there's this, like, oh, man, we may miss that. Okay. Yeah. We can see that part.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:05:52 to 01:06:12

It's that way with everything. It's all walks of life. Whenever you're getting different vendors, whether it's your roof or your insurance or your foundation or whatever, there's a little bit of trial and error in there. You got to find really good people, and then once you find somebody that you can trust and, you know, does a great job, then you're great, which is why I had you here. All right, brother.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:06:12 to 01:06:22

Well, I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. That's all we got. So if you guys need your roof inspected, you need your foundation inspected, you need any work at all, please give Reagan and his team a call.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:06:22 to 01:06:31

They're awesome. They're super trustworthy guys. He's a great human being. They got a bunch of great people at their office. So we'll have you back sometime, and we'll maybe talk more baseball, right?

Regan Parsons (Guest) | 01:06:31 to 01:06:35

Yeah, please do. I'll tell my dad you said hi. That's right. All right, we'll see you guys.