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earthquake retrofitting

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Resources

Weinstein Construction offers resources to help our customers.

Our learning center is designed to give homeowners a quick glimpse into the most common structural problems you might come across in relation to the services that we offer to fix those problems. These are resources that we have compiled so that you don’t have to. It’s an opportunity to educate yourself on things that you may not have experience in from people who want to share their knowledge and expertise.

Weinstein construction has resources available to you if you are interested in educating yourself on how to seismically retrofit or repair your home.

If your home or building suffers from some of the problems below, then please give us a call today and we will help you address those problems so that your home or building is structurally safe and sound. Whether it needs foundation repair or seismic retrofitting or drainage installation, Weinstein Construction can help you with that. You deserve to sleep soundly at night knowing that your home is structurally safe and prepared for the next major quake.

What Problems Ail Your Home?

Click on the pictures for a pop-out of additional text, and from there click on the sub-heading title to take you to the corresponding page where you can learn more about the issue.


House Bolting
California homeowners face the reality of having to protect their homes to resist the destructive forces of earthquake activity. Newly built homes usually come with hardware up-to-code. However, the greater number of homes does not. These homes can slide off their foundation and may need to be demolished entirely once the initial damage is done. But how do you determine if your house is bolted?

Foundation Repair
Foundation problems are caused by the continuously changing conditions of the soils around your home. Clay soil expands as it absorbs moisture, and contracts as it dries. That can cause foundations to move, settle and crack. Dry and wet weather cycles produce a constantly changing soil bed under your home's foundation. Foundation drainage problems can be caused by too much moisture as well as too little. Lastly, beware of trees and tree roots.

House Floor Leveling
Squeaky floors are a sign that your floors may not be level. The sound that you're hearing is metal scraping against wood or metal. Sometimes it requires a simple nailing of the subfloor so the noise stops. But if you place a marble on the floor and it tends to travel with momentum, then you might have a greater floor leveling problem.

Drainage Systems
Cracking of your foundation most of the time occurs when water penetrates through the concrete. Consider this: the nature of concrete is to crack. What's more, older homes were built without rebar or steel embedded into the concrete. While the concrete underneath your home may be cracking due to drainage problems, your home may be sitting on top of a crumbling cake.

Crawl Space Services
Dirt crawl spaces have high humidity levels necessary for mold growth. Humidity levels from 50% to 90% are easily found in dirt crawl spaces that have never flooded and problems can be worse in the ones that have. All mold spores need to grow is organic material such as wood, the right temperature range, and moisture. Of these, the only one that can be controlled is moisture.

Hillside Stabilization Services
Many homes that exist on hillside locations face the serious risk of landslide failure. Rainwater and erosion can chip away at the edge of cliffs, causing homes to become unstable. Hillside stabilization projects do not have to be very costly if you are taking preventative measures on your older home long before signs of failure begin to show.

Caissons and Grade Beams
Caissons and grade beams are needed for many hillside homes in Southern California. They are deep pile structural concrete, which support the home from underneath it, dug several feet into the ground ensuring that your home or property will not face any risk of sliding off the foundation or down the hill. They may be used for other applications as well.

Retaining Walls Construction Services
There are many kinds and types of retaining walls ranging from decorative garden walls to engineered retaining walls. Retaining walls are commonly designed to hold back soil to prevent down-slope movement or erosion. Retaining walls are constructed with reinforced concrete block or cast concrete or Shotcrete.

Concrete Slab Repair
Concrete slab is a shallow, reinforced-concrete structural member that is very wide compared to its depth. A concrete slab is, typically between 3″-4″ thick, and is most often used to construct floors and ceilings spanning between beams, girders, or columns, while thinner slabs are also used for exterior paving.

Commercial Retrofitting Services
Whether you own a tilt-up building for industrial warehouses, buildings with unreinforced masonry walls, office buildings, soft story apartment complexes (see our tab on soft story), or other kinds of commercial buildings, there is usually always something that can be done to enhance your building to ensure it remains safe during the next major earthquake.

Gabion Systems
Invented by Leonardo Da Vinci centuries ago, gabions were first used to create barricades during times of war to protect against enemy fire and invasion. Da Vinci designed a type of gabion called a Corbeille Leonard for the foundations of the San Marco Castle in Milan.

Soft Story Reinforcement
According to the California Institute of Technology, there are more than 20,000 soft-story structures in the City of Los Angeles alone. According to the Department of Building and Safety, only 800 of these 20,000 soft-story structures have been seismically retrofitted. In the next major earthquake, catastrophic failure is possible to happen to about 19,000 soft-story structures due to the bending and breaking of ordinary columns.

House bolting

House bolting

There are three basic things all crawl spaces should have: wood, concrete, and dirt. What you want to look for are anchor bolts along the perimeter, spaced about 4-6' apart. If none exists or if they're rusty, then it's time to bolt your house.

Foundation Repair

Foundation Repair

Once foundation problems start, they can lead to even more problems, including: interior and exterior structural and cosmetic damage, cracked or sloping floors, poorly fitting molding and cabinets, cracks in interior walls and ceilings, sticking doors and windows, and devaluation of your home.

House Floor Leveling

House Floor Leveling

Differential measurements are taken to measure where the floors show sign of sloping, either in the positive or in the negative direction. Floor leveling restores the floors back near to their original position, though further action may be required to mitigate the causes of floor sloping.

Drainage Systems

Drainage Systems

Installing a drainage system is one of the best ways to protect your home. Water intrusion tends to destroy the foundations of homes and simultaneously spread mold spores into your house. This can be prevented with the evaluation of a professional drainage systems expert.

Crawl Space Services

Crawl Space Services

Crawlspaces are smelly, dirty, dark, and claustrophobic for many. Some homeowners like to think of visiting their crawlspace as an adventure, while we like to think of it as a way to protect your home. With over 35 years of experience spending a majority of our time examining the condition of crawlspaces all across Southern California, we specialize in solving all crawl space moisture problems with one simple, warranted solution called Clean Space.

Hillside Stabilization Services

Hillside Stabilization Services

An earthquake can show us that many homes are in need of hillside stabilization. There are still thousands of homes that need these services, and new construction building codes require that hillside stabilization of the highest standards be enforced. The problem is that most of these existing homes are older and lack the proper stabilization to survive their hillside location, especially during the next major earthquake, which is predicted to happen within the decade.

Caissons And Grade Beams

Caissons And Grade Beams Services

With multiple applications, from tall rise apartment building foundation supports to retaining walls, caissons are the perfect way to protect your investment in heavy load circumstances. While commercially caissons are typically used to set piers for bridges & underpasses, they are viewed as a reliable, versatile, and economical foundation support solution.

Retaining Walls

Retaining Walls

Concrete Block Retaining Walls are constructed by using concrete blocks reinforced with steel or rebar and then filled with concrete, also commonly known as "Pour and Place Retaining Walls." Shotcrete Retaining Walls are poured either plain smooth or with a desirable finish. They are set with caissons as well as proper reinforcing steel and then filled with concrete. These need special engineered plans.

Concrete Slab Repair

Concrete Slab Repair

Common symptoms include:

  • Unleveled floors
  • Broken floor tiles
  • Sloping floors
  • Bumps in carpet
  • Cracks on the walls
  • Sticky doors or windows
Concrete slabs are built using form-work. If the slab is to be reinforced, rebar is positioned before the concrete is poured in.

Commercial Retrofitting

Commercial Retrofitting

If the connections between walls, wood floors, and roof are weak, walls can pull away. Tilt-up buildings are particularly dangerous because they possess many structural weaknesses since they have large openings for industrial sized doors and windows which offer little stability for the structure.

Gabion Systems

Gabion Systems

A gabion is a wire fabric container, uniformly partitioned, of variable size, interconnected with other similar containers and filled with stone at the site of use, to form flexible, permeable, monolithic structures such as retaining walls, seawalls, channel linings, revetments, weirs, etc., for erosion and flood control.

Soft Story Reinforcement

Soft Story Reinforcement

A large opening in at least one wall, and a lack of central supports, make soft stories more susceptible to lateral forces from a large earthquake. When they fall, the second floor "pancakes" onto the first floor. Shear wall panels won't help much. Soft-story buildings need to be retrofitted with specially designed steel reinforcements.