Foundation Signs Quiz: Five Questions for Oklahoma City, OK Homes
A sticking door or a thin line in the drywall can mean very little, or it can be worth showing someone. For an Oklahoma City, OK home, or one elsewhere in Oklahoma County and the nearby cities we take requests from, these five questions turn what you have spotted into one of three calm results, each pointing to a reasonable next step.
- No Cost to Request
- Oklahoma Rules and Permit Basics
- Local to Oklahoma County & Nearby
- Slab & Pier-and-Beam Homes
How Your Answers Are Used
The five steps ask what the house stands on, which signs you have seen, how wide the biggest crack is, whether anything has changed lately and what may be putting water close to the walls. Walk the outside first, looking low along the brick or siding, then go room by room inside, looking around door frames and window corners and along the tops of the walls. A credit card works as a rough crack gauge, and a ball set down on a hard floor will drift toward a low spot. You may tick several boxes at Step 2, and "Not sure" never counts against you.
Four answers carry extra weight: sloping floors, a crack at least 1/4 inch across, gaps along the ceiling or trim, and signs that got worse in recent months. Pick two or more and you will see Result 3. Any other answer worth a second look brings up Result 2, and a sloping floor alone is enough for that. Answers with nothing to follow up show Result 1. The quiz adds up your answers and nothing else; it cannot weigh how serious a sign is. Only a specialist or an engineer standing in the house can say what it means.
Big swings in weather are a natural reminder to look again. The National Weather Service office in Norman counts 63 days of 100°F or hotter at Oklahoma City, OK in 2011, more than in any other year it has on file, and the Oklahoma Mesonet puts May 2015, at 19.48 inches, down as the city's wettest month. After a long hot, dry run, or the heavy rain that breaks one, a fresh lap around the house is simply good habit.
Turning the Result Into Action
The choice of what comes next is yours. To have someone look at the house, send a request. It comes to us, and we pass it along to a single local foundation specialist, which chooses whether to reply; anything after that is between the two of you. For a rough sense of pier costs, try the cost calculator. The license gap, the City's registration and the permit questions are laid out on our page about Oklahoma's rules for foundation work.