The job is replacing the dimensional lumber beams and support posts with PSL beams and steel posts. The apartment complex belongs to a family that owns a few hundred units. The patriarch passed away and now the wife and daughter are in charge. The property manager has been with the family for twenty-two years. His name is Alex.... nice guy and having managed apartments for most of his life I reckon he would have to be... a nice guy.
The wife and daughter had previously left all of the property issues to the man. They had never been on the property. Then they saw the sag in the beams. The floor of the two apartments slopes dramatically. Well being uninformed about physics as it relates to the angle of repose.. they recoiled. Immediate action was called for. Alex explained that the condition as they found it has been that way for the entire twenty-two years that they have known about him. That is if they knew about him.
The contractor that was awarded the contract is a close friend. The first time that I met him was twenty-five years ago. As an aside, he lived in the apartment complex across the street then. Well he asked me to have a look at what was going on. An engineer drew up a set of plans and on the plan was this, "Level the floor." Gotta love engineers. The building is just under four inches out of level in fifty feet. There are individual dips due to the sagging beams which could be mitigated...some. The note about the level floor was removed.
We commenced to shoring the building with 6"x12" lumber. Most of the individual dips are gone and the carport ceiling is now a nearly straight line. The building remains four inches out of level.
Now to the reason I posted this: It's the post on the right. As the beams were being removed, the post fell over. I was not connected to the footing... and not because something broke or rotted.
It was just never connected. The post base was a dummy.
Gravity was an engineered feature back in the day.
It is debatable as to whether the lady owners should be informed. The other post had a legitimate attachment to the footing. The apartment complex has dozens of these posts. When I first analyzed the situation, I surmised that the original construction was four inches out of level. I haven't changed my mind about that.