Most Common Structure Issues in Commercial Properties

9/2/2020 (Permalink)

While we hope you never experience a disaster at your business, we do know we are ready to help you restore it in the event of one

Winston-Salem is in the midst of a Commercial and Residential Building Boom!

I absolutely love every bit of it! The City of Arts and Innovation is growing like never before. It might seem like chaos at first, but it’s a delicate and well thought out expansion, that is driving our city forward and into the future.

With all this new growth, there will be some growing pains, and most of those are going to be from our older and historic buildings. One of the main issues common among these commercial buildings is Structural Foundation Failure. When Investing in a new property it is imperative that you and a hired professional inspect the foundation. They will be able to point out some of the most common structure issues.

Some of the most obvious ones are Exterior Cracks and Fascia Issues. These are out in the open, and there is no hiding them. They most likely come from the building settling into the ground around it. Soil is compacted over time, and when a building is constructed, the soil is dug up and becomes loose. When the foundation is poured, they try their very best to compact and level the soil around and underneath it, but there is no way to make it perfect. Over time it will settle, there is no IF about it. When this starts to happen, you’ll notice doors sticking and windows starting to be harder to open and close. There may be some tiling and flooring that’ll start to warp. You may not notice small interior cracks until they really start to become bigger.

One very large and Scary issue is Plumbing Failure. As a commercial building settles, the plumbing will shift outside and inside the building. Especially with older buildings and older plumbing. It’s not uncommon to still run into Terracotta or Cast Iron pipes. These pipes are aging right along with the building, and as that foundation moves, it becomes unstable and stressed. Commercial buildings are going to have larger pipes than residential homes and you are looking at a larger water damaged area when that pipe finally fails.

BUT, and this is a big caveat. For the Right Location for your growing business, most of the issues stated above are fixable. Location means so much today in the growing business world, that remodeling an older commercial building could be a sound investment to make. Not only are you investing in your future, but you are also investing into Winston-Salem.