Hello everyone, the blog posts will now resume. There was a short break in blog posts due to a completely full schedule of structural inspections over the past couple of months. Crossroads Engineers strive to provide up-to-date information for your convenience and to ensure that our engineering practices are up to standard with the most recent residential property city code and available technology. These blog posts build confidence in our clients that this is not Crossroads Engineers’ first rodeo with any seismic shifting, stair-step cracks, or structural pier installation.
On 09/25/2026, we arrived at another home located in Salt Lake City, Utah. This home in a semi-urban neighborhood was built in 1990 and has lasted quite well over the years. Between remodels and new paint jobs, the home doesn’t look like it’s 36 years old. However, there are a couple of dead giveaways to the age of this home. The stairstep cracks located at the rear wall of the garage were rather large and were immediately identified as a problem by us and the inspector. The home is currently for sale, and this crack scares away any and all potential home buyers. The home needs to be sold soon, putting the current homeowners in a tough position.
The inspector noted significant stair-step cracking, bulging, and horizontal displacement of the masonry on the rear wall. When there are multiple red flags such as these, the possibility of the wall or even the whole home coming down due to a stressful event is not negligible. This is a problem that would scare any home buyer and needs to be fixed quickly for selling purposes as well as safety purposes. The most common reason for these three red flags all together is vertical settlement, however, we confirmed that for this house, rotation of the wall is the primary cause of these problems.
This distinction is important because conventional structural piers would not correct the condition observed. The affected masonry wall has rotated and bulged sufficiently that it cannot reasonably be expected to be restored to a vertical and square condition through foundation stabilization alone. The reason this is such a big safety problem is that this wall is a structural wall, holding the load from above. This load increases as snow falls as well, which could act as the extra stressful event that finally takes the wall down one day.
Salt Lake City, Utah, has unique structural load obstacles, the most notable being the one listed above: snow load. Utah is one of the top 10 snowiest states and receives up to 3 feet of snow from a single blizzard in the valley areas like Salt Lake and up to 8 feet of snow from a single blizzard in the more mountainous parts of Utah. Snow like this piling on top of an already compromised structural wall is a recipe for destruction. The cold temperatures and harsh winds would also add additional stress to the wall during a blizzard. A wall with this type of damage during a blizzard is like structurally gambling with hundreds of thousands of dollars in property value.
The way to fix a buzzing problem like this does take a couple of steps, but it is well worth the structural stability and safety. The way to fix a load-bearing wall like this requires first a sufficient temporary wall to bear the load when the original wall is being replaced. This temporary wall allows all the load from above to transfer to the soil while the bulging wall can have adequate repairs done. The size and location of the temporary wall can be decided by the contractor who takes on this job, but the temporary load-bearing wall should not get in the way of fixing the original wall and should provide enough support to the home to keep it upright.
After the temporary load-bearing wall is in place, the contractor is to make the repairs to the wall and then remove the temporary wall. This fix will allow the wall to be more secure and stable. The new wall should have no bulging or tilting. This fix, however, will not eliminate the risk of future movement. If future movement occurs, this whole cycle may repeat itself and cause a lack of safety and costly repairs. This brings up the question of “why was there movement in the first place?”
This home is located on a hillside, and the cracks and bulging of the wall suggest that there are lateral soil pressures and/or hillside movement contributing to the deformation of the home. Repairing the wall is a small task compared to repairing and securing an entire hillside. The hillside can be dealt with; however, the complexity and costliness of the hillside operations may be well outside of the potential homebuyer’s and homeowner’s view. Ultimately, four walls on a slippery slope can be fixed over and over, but the slippery slope won’t stop moving. The hillside very well could continue to build in soil pressure and cause movement, which will cause even the greatest of engineered walls to start to bulge or crack.
Unfortunately, there isn’t always a happy ending to these stories. This exemplifies the necessity and urgency of calling an engineer and getting a property assessed. This is especially relevant for people searching to buy a home. Too often we see situations in structural engineering where someone would’ve never made the purchase of the home if they had just known about the underlying, hidden risks. Some of these risks show up as bulging walls and massive cracks, but some are completely invisible and require a keen eye to spot. Thank you for reading our blog about structural adventures and helping people keep their homes structurally secure.
