As part of my ongoing construction career, I became certified many years ago by the what was formerly known as the International Conference of Building Officials, (I.C.B.O.) and now known as the International Code Council, (I.C.C.) As part of this web site I thought I would present some interesting situations that have been truly fascinating to me although probably not as much to the owners.
I do mostly commercial inspections but managed to fit in this professor who wanted to buy a house on a small hill in the Koko Head area. The house is 80 years old and was showing its age although not as bad as most I have seen. The former owner was a tinkerer, do it yourself type, and I find these to be some of the most interesting inspections, specially the projects done by engineers and the like. It's funny but then sad when gravity starts to work its wonders. What I also find absolutely amazing is how individuals "re-invent" construction methods and their use of materials can just be astonishing. Back to the house.
On one side of this house was an old stacked retaining lava rock wall and it had to be at least twenty feet high. There were no drains installed in the bottom. I noticed many deep cracks in the sidewalks and foundation blocks around the house. The closer I got to the rock wall the deeper the cracks.
With this in mind I took a closer look at the wall and noticed a deep bow in the wall.
Knowing every property is surveyed when it is up for sale, I decided to look for the survey markers to see what was going on. The back of lot marker was at the corner of the wall but the marker in the front was on TOP OF THE WALL. So what this means is the property has been in the same hands for many years, never been surveyed and the wall is now on the neighbors property. I would imagine an encroachment agreement is being inked as we speak.