I thought the 'concrete cancer' story was just a scare tactic

Kept seeing articles about crumbling foundations in Connecticut and figured it was overblown. Then I saw a core sample from a 1980s house where the aggregate had swelled to twice its size, splitting the slab from the inside. Anyone else run into this on an inspection?

3 comments

3 Comments

carter.mila10d ago

My buddy bought a fixer-upper last year and the inspector missed it completely. They found the basement floor had these huge spiderweb cracks, and a chunk just crumbled in his hand. The repair quote was more than his down payment.

jenny_lane1210d ago

That's actually a pretty common misunderstanding. The problem usually starts in the walls, not the floor slab. The pyrrhotite in the concrete blocks swells and pushes the foundation walls inward.

emmaking10d ago

Yeah, those basement floor cracks are often the last thing to show. Get a structural engineer out before you trust any inspector's all-clear.