Vibration Damage Assessments
Construction season is coming, and with it come the inevitable vibration damage claims. While we are asked to undertake vibration damage assessments on a regular basis for a variety of reasons, including large trees falling, vehicle impacts, etc., the main reason is due to road construction.
While it is possible to get vibration damage to a home from construction activities, it is extremely rare. Vibrations produced from road construction are usually too far from the house to cause any structural damage to a home. Unless the road construction extends up close to the building for some reason, it is almost impossible for standard road construction to cause new damage to a building. As vibrations move through soil, they dampen (decrease) at a quick rate.
As vibrations reach a building, they dampen even further. So, if you are going to experience damages, they will typically be localized to the area nearest the construction. You won’t be experiencing damages at the rear of the building if the road construction is out front, for example.
There has been extensive research done into several types of construction equipment and several types of buildings to document vibrations from various sources and their effects on buildings and people. While we are doing our assessments, we will measure the distance from the structure to the nearest construction site, compare to published research, and undertake calculations to compare to known data and damage thresholds. While we have extensive experience assessing buildings for vibration damages, these scientific reasonings are often helpful to satisfy client concerns for their homes.
Often times, vibrations are strong enough to be susceptible or even disturbing to people, but still well below the threshold to damage a building’s structure. It’s common for us to hear from people that they were sitting in their homes and they could feel the vibrations or their pictures were rattling or other similar anecdotal evidence, especially now that people are home more often due to Covid. They can then start looking around their home and thinking “these cracks weren’t here before”. This can lead to aesthetic concerns or to concerns that their structure has shifted, settled, cracked, or other various concerns that we have heard.
As mentioned above, it’s extremely rare for us to find any structural or new aesthetic damage to a home from road construction. The exception where we do sometimes see damages are worsening aesthetic damages. While the road construction vibrations are typically too low to cause new aesthetic damages (e.g. crack drywall), it takes very little force to propagate an existing crack. If the house has pre-existing cracks, sometimes not necessarily visible as they were painted over or otherwise repaired before, they can extend, re-open, etc. This minor worsening of a pre-existing aesthetic concern rarely is indicative of any structural concerns, though.
If you have clients who are concerned about their home this construction season, or for any other reason, feel free to reach out. We’d be happy to help you out.
