WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY HOUSE?

One spring morning you are going out the back door of your house and notice that it is a little harder than usual to open. You suspect that the wood is swollen because it has been raining for several days. You hope that it will stop sticking as soon as the weather changes. The next week, you can hardly open the door even though the sun has been shining for three straight days. You remove the door from its hinges, plane-off a fraction of an inch, and think that you have fixed the problem for good.

Everything works fine until the next spring when the same door starts sticking again. One kitchen window is also stuck and another is badly cracked. You call the contractor to complain that your two-year old house needs repaired. The contractor agrees to take care of the windows, but informs you that this will be his last trip to your house - he can't be responsible for perpetual maintenance work on your home. You fix the door and the contractor replaces the windows. Now everything should be fixed.

Late in the fall a major rainstorm strikes and you notice water seeping into your basement through a newly formed crack in the concrete-block wall. The back door is stuck again, three of your interior doors are difficult to close, and two of your largest windows have diagonal cracks in the glass. You call the contractor again, but he claims that it has been three years since he sold you the house and refuses to make repairs.

The following spring, the problem becomes obvious. After a major snowmelt and rainstorm, you notice fractures in the ground up-slope from your house and a bulge in the front yard below your house. You now have major problems with all of your doors and windows, plaster cracks are visible in every room of the house, and your plumbing has sprung two leaks in the past three days. Your house is riding down the hill atop a slowly moving landslide.

You call your insurance agent to file a damage claim. He informs you that your insurance policy does not cover landslide damage. You get mad and call the main office. The claims representative recites from memory the section, paragraph, and line from your insurance policy that excludes landslide damage. Sorry!

From here, things get worse instead of better. The city building inspector arrives with a warrant to conduct a structural inspection of your home. After the inspection, he informs you that he will be filing a condemnation order and that you will have 10 days to move out. A tremendous nightmare - you can't live in the house, your insurance will not pay to fix it, and you still owe the bank $72,000 on the mortgage.


MORE COMMON THAN YOU THINK

Perhaps you are thinking "this can't happen to me." Don't be too sure. Every year, hundreds of people in Pennsylvania and surrounding states loose their home or pay expensive repair bills to correct landslide damage. Landslides are especially common in Tioga County. Several small ones can be seen on the Mansfield University campus, several intermediate-sized ones are within a five-minute drive and one of the most expensive landslides in Pennsylvania's history is located along Route 15, just a few miles north of town.


GETTING INFORMATION:

The United States Soil Conservation Service has published county soil surveys for Pennsylvania and other states. These contain aerial photographs with soil types plotted on them. You can determine the soil type present at a particular property by locating the land on the aerial photo and looking-up the soil type in the accompanying report. The report provides important information such as the susceptibility of that soil type to mass wasting, and other important engineering characteristics.

Hill-side homes and building sites should be avoided or developed with extreme caution. Get all the necessary information before you purchase because homeowners insurance will not cover losses due to landslide problems.

RETURN TO GEONET