The Engineer Wanted Deeper Footings. I Told Him My Father Never Needed Them

A reader writes:

I am sixty-one years old and I have been building things most of my life. Chicken coops, a shop front, my mother’s kitchen, two verandahs for church brethren. I am not a mason by trade, I was a mechanic, but I know my way around a mixer and a line level, and I was always the one people called when they wanted something done cheap and done right. I say that so you understand this is not a letter from a man who did not know better. It is a letter from a man who thought he knew better, which I have since learned is worse.

When my wife and I decided to build on the half-acre we bought near Santa Cruz, our son in Florida insisted we get proper drawings and an engineer. He was paying part of the cost so I agreed. The engineer was a young man, maybe thirty-five, very polite. He came, looked at the land, took some samples and went away. Two weeks later he sent the structural drawings, and when I looked at the foundation details I nearly laughed. The footings were deeper and wider than anything I had ever seen on a two-bedroom house. More steel too. He had written a note about the soil, something about clay that swells when it is wet and shrinks when it is dry, and the back part of the lot being filled ground.

I called him. I said, young man, my father built a house on the same kind of land in 1971 with footings half this size and it is still standing. He said, very respectfully, that he could not speak for my father’s house but he could speak for mine, and that the soil report showed the risk clearly. I said I would think about it.

I did not think about it very long. The mason I hired, a good man I have known for years, agreed with me. “Boss, we always do it so, it will hold.” Between the two of us we decided on something in the middle. Deeper than my father’s, not as deep as the drawings. Less steel than specified. We saved a fair amount of money, and I felt clever. I did not tell my son, and I did not tell the engineer. My wife asked me once if we were following the plans and I said near enough. She trusted me. That is the part that still sits heavy.

We moved in just before Christmas three years ago. It was a lovely little house. For the first year, nothing. Then after the long dry spell and the heavy rains that came behind it, I noticed a crack running diagonally from the corner of the back bedroom window. Then one over the bathroom door. Then the back door started to stick. By the second rainy season you could put a fingernail in the crack by the window, and there was a gap opening between the floor tiles and the wall along the back of the house. The back of the house. The filled part.

I will be honest with you about what happened in me, because I think it matters as much as the cracks. I panicked. Not outwardly. I am not a man who shouts. But inside I was frightened in a way I had not been since I was young. I could not sleep. I would get up at two in the morning and go and look at the crack with a torch, as if staring at it would stop it. I was afraid the wall would come down on my wife. I was afraid of the cost. More than anything I was afraid of telling my son, because I would have to tell him what I had done.

It was my wife who found me one night in the back room with the torch. I told her everything. She was quiet for a long time, and then she said, “So we will call the engineer in the morning.” That was all. No quarrel. In the morning she read Isaiah 41:10 at devotion, the one that says fear not, for I am with you, I will strengthen you, I will help you. I had read it a hundred times. That morning it felt as if it had been written for a foolish old man with a torch.

I called the same young engineer. I expected him to be vexed, and I would not have blamed him. He was not. He came, measured the cracks, put some tell-tales on the walls to see if they were still moving, and told me plainly what I already knew: the foundations along the back were not adequate for that ground. The good news, he said, was that it could be repaired. The house was not going to fall down on anybody that night. The repair would involve underpinning the back section and dealing with the drainage around the house so that the soil stayed more even. It was not cheap. It cost a good deal more than what I had saved, and a good deal more than doing it right the first time would have cost.

I told my son on a video call. He did not say much either. I think he was more hurt that I had not told him than about the money. He helped with the repair. The work was done last year and the cracks have not come back. We had the walls plastered and painted. You would not know now. But I know.

I am writing because I hear men my age talking the same way I used to. We always do it so. My father never needed it. These young engineers just want to spend your money. I want to say to them: your father’s land is not your land, and his house is not your house. If a qualified person looks at your soil and tells you something, the least you owe your family is to listen properly before you decide. And if you have already made the mistake, do not sit up at night with a torch. Tell somebody. Call somebody. Help comes quicker than pride will let you believe.

— Winston, St Elizabeth

Editor’s note

Thank you, Winston, for a letter that many readers will recognise. Two lessons stand out. The first is practical: soil and fill vary from lot to lot, even on the same road, and the foundation details on structural drawings exist for reasons that may not be visible on the surface. If you disagree with a design, ask the engineer to explain it, or get a second qualified opinion, rather than quietly building something different. The second is about the heart. Winston’s worst night was not the one when the crack appeared, but the one he spent alone with it. Fear grows in secret. Bringing a problem into the open, to a spouse, a family member and the right professional, is often the moment it begins to shrink.

Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.

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