Charlie: Alicia from Alief writes to us here. Tom, she says, I bought a home in 1994, and the previous owner, you’re going to love this, had built on a 342 square foot room addition for himself, and he did it by just pouring concrete slab on the ground with no wire or steel beams. Well, she had the house leveled several years ago, but they would not put piers on that addition because there were no steel beams and the slab would just break down the middle. So now after Harvey and all the rain, we got the slab inside, it’s sinking, and the roof pitch is not right. It’s been repaired in smaller rooms three times, and to install filler to raise is only guaranteed for one year, and if I sell the house, that’s a problem no one would want to buy, so she called TriFection. She wants to know if they’re a reputable company because she’s starting to think that what she needs to do is do what you just talked about, call Cherry.
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Tom: I think so. I mean, there’s no way around it. If the guy just poured a little patio or maybe built something on a patio that was there, I don’t know, but it can’t be fixed, and it’s not that the steel beams, you need a grade beam that will have steel in it just for people listening, and that’s what holds the slab together, so without that, it’s a loss. It’s a goner. It’s a lost cause. It’s history.
Charlie: Okay, be nice.
Tom: No.
Charlie: It’s Alicia’s house we’re talking about.
Tom: Yeah, and demolition is what it needs to have done. I don’t know if Cherry would come in and do that demo.
Charlie: Now, they might not necessarily have to tear the whole house down.
Tom: No, no, just the addition.
Charlie: Okay.
Tom: Yeah, yeah.
Charlie: And Cherry can do that. They can come in and just pull that one part down.
Tom: Yeah. They actually can.
Charlie: They sure can.
Tom: Yeah, and haul it away and recycle what they can. It won’t be a lot of concrete because the guy didn’t put enough in there. I don’t think you’ll get any steel out of it either.
Charlie: But, as my momma said, you can’t get out what wasn’t put in.
Tom: That’s right.
Charlie: There is it.
Tom: But yeah, tear it down and start over.