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FUN FACTS:  On dry windy days, a great deal of the water sprayed out of sprinkler systems is lost to evaporation.  The loss can be as much as 20%.  Sprinklers are often set to work at night when higher humidity and lower temperatures reduce water loss to...

Individuals who ask “How much foundation movement is too much” will receive a variety of answers depending on who they ask.  The answer will depend on the respondent’s vested interests and opinions about the appropriate performance standards, building...

In Texas, there is no statute that defines failure for a residential foundation.  To the extent that definitions exist, they have been established by trade groups.  There are two groups that have produced written standards defining what constitutes a...

To answer the question, you first need to know what you get with a soils report and what you do not get.  Soils reports are based on samples.  To obtain samples, a hollow tube, several inches in diameter is pressed into the ground.  The tube is then pulled...

The summer has ended, Labor Day has come and gone, the kids are back in school, and the temperatures have dropped below 90 degrees.  The days when the weather is sucking water out of the ground are over, or are they?  Most homeowners assume that they no...

Fun Facts: The largest trees in the world are the California Sequoia (Sequoiadendron Giganteum).  As their scientific name implies, they are giants.  The largest tree is the General Grant with a diameter of 28.9 feet and a circumference of 87 feet. ...

In Texas, on average, the hottest three weeks of the year are the last week of July and the first two weeks of August.  When we get days with peak temperatures over 100 degrees, they are most often concentrated in this three week period.  Late summer...

To understand why soils shrink and swell, you need to understand water molecules and clay molecules. Each water molecule is made of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. Each of the hydrogen atoms shares its electron with the oxygen atom. Thus, water...

Nobody wants to see cracks of any kind in their foundation. But vertical foundation cracks and horizontal foundation cracks can indicate very different issues, so if you’ve got cracks in your foundation, you should know a bit about the difference between...

Pier and beam homes are homes with a space between the floor and the ground.  The space between the floor and the ground is called the crawlspace.  As the name implies, the spaces are usually (but not always) so low that you cannot stand up and must crawl...