Residential Earthquake Retrofit, House Bolting, Foundation Repair/Replacement, Cripple Wall Bracing, Water Drainage Issues

An inexperenced or crooked contractor might leave you with some of this.

PPT 15

During an earthquake this house is subject to sliding failure due to missing connectors from the  gap in the upper plate to the bolted plate at the foundation level.

PPT 25

Required nailing is missing at the upper panel edges due to missing blocking at the top edges

PPT 22

The holes drilled into the concrete were larger than the bolt manufacturer’s specifications thereby allowing the bolts to lose their grip into the concrete rendering the installation useless . 

PPT 24

Hard to imagine a contractor allowing his company to perform such installations.

PPT 26

Rather than adding proper blocking in the same plane as the cripple wall studs, this contractor just nailed the bottom edge to the plate. The resultant gap allows nails to bend and fail to afford shear bracing during a seismic event.

PPT 27

Studs and proper nailing is required.

PPT 28

This other contractor anchored the sill plate but failed to complete any connection of the floor plane through required cripple wall bracing

PPT 29

More from above.

PPT 32

Note the splitting in the sill plate. A proper installation requires a pilot hole to drilled prior to installing the lag bolts. This contractor saved a bit of time & labor but left the installation begging for security.

PPT 33

Sill plate bolting must either be epoxy or expansion anchors imbedded a minimum of 3” into the concrete. This impostor lag bolt is not an anchor bolt and it did not even reach the concrete.

  PPT 34

Here the impostor is exposed for the fakery how it and the contractor cheated the unsuspecting home owner.

PPT 35

This joke retrofit offers very little resistance to sliding failure.

  PPT 36

We were surprised that this contractor thought one nail into a thin strap would hold a home’s sill plate from sliding. Also a single nail into the concrete is the other feeble link of the worthless thin strap.

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Recommendations

Margaret Vinci, Cal-Tech.
"I am happy to send a personal letter of endorsement but, unfortunately, Caltech does not do endorsements All Californians should consider earthquake retrofitting their home to reduce their potential losses. Ed Sylvis runs Seismic Safety which is one of the best companies in the business with the highest reputation amongst his clients for not only the quality of work but also Ed's honesty, integrity and ethics.  It is a personal agenda for me to assist residents in being earthquake prepared and I endorse Ed Sylvis without hesitation."
Mr. Tim Eng, Pacific Palisades..
"I found you on the internet ...your professionalism during the pre-contract inspection of my home made it easy to select you. Thank you for your honesty and the thorough job."
Cheryl Manning.
"Seismic Safety bolted my house and adjusted the floors. I had no qualms about having them back in August of 2006 to build the foundation for my new addition. Because of their attention to detail and pride in a job well done, Seismic Safety is on my short list of contractors I recommend without hesitation. I look forward to putting these sentiments on Angies List."
Momita Sengupta, Venice.
"I am writing to express my gratitude for the work completed on our house. This is our first home and a very important investment to us. Your crew has been incredibly polite, neat, and hard working. Ken Compton was extremely helpful and gracious ... I am glad we decided to go with Seismic Safety for our retrofitting work given the care and attention our house has received. I will be recommending your company to my friends and colleagues."
Mr. Brian Ofria.
"My father is an engineer of some renown. He and I agree that Ed Sylvis saved the life of our wonderful home here in Woodland Hills. He did exactly as promised and a little more. We did our research on him before contract. Everyone said and promised us that we would be happy we chose him, and indeed we were."
Mandy Ceja, Fairgreen Ave Monrovia.
"It was great to work with such a professional organization. I wish all my business encounters were as positive. Thanks......"
Bill and Dan Clark, La Prada St., Highland Park.
"Ken Compton was a excellent to work with very personable. As I did not personally witness the crew preform the job, but I am very pleased as the job looks great!!.."
Daniel Berman Malcom Ave., Los Angeles.
"I called Seismic Saftey because my General Contractor said that we needed to have the house bolted down. The contranctor wanted to charge near $7,000.00 for the job I was very pleased with the service I received by Seismic Safety; both over the phone and in person. They were very honest and infact initially told us that our house probably did not need to be inspected at all. They determined this because by the year the house was built and the area of the house For piece of mind, I had Seismic Safety come over anyway to inspect the bolts. After 10 minutes of crawling under the house. They quickly determined that the house was sufficiently Anchor bolted. They provided a follow-up report 2 days later stating that no work needed to be done and the house was indeed sufficiently bolted. Seismic Safety saved me $7000.00 dollars, Prior to the inspection, I asked Seismic Safety if they could give a quote anyway to bolt the house incase we needed it. Their quote was less than half of the contractor Finally, Seismic Safety followed up a couple of times to make sure that we were satisfied and if we needed anything else."
Drew Maitch, Mountain Street Glendale.
"They braced the cripple walls, and bolted the structure to the foundation around the perimeter of our crawl space, On the recommendation from our home inspector, we called Seismic Safety during escrow to inspect the lack of retrofitting in most of the crawl space of our new home (actually old home, built in 1924) and estimate the cost of the necessary upgrades. They came out quickly (charging a nominal fee which would be applied to the work should they be awarded the job), and gave me an estimate within 48 hours of my first call. The estimate was fair, and the crew arrived the morning after we received the keys to the house. They bolted the foundation, and braced the cripple walls all the way around the perimeter of the crawl space. They were professional, maintained a clean worksite, and did quality work that passed the city inspection immediately. The job took 3 days. I would recommend them without hesitation"

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