Bleeding

What it is

Bleeding is when a house is actively getting worse. The damage isn’t done — it’s still happening. Usually water.

I think about this guy named Brad. He went on a business trip for three or four days, came home, tried to open the front door and it wouldn’t open. Got in through the garage. Floors were separated. Cracks in the drywall. Every door in the house was rubbing. The kitchen cabinets wouldn’t stay closed, like the house had shifted.

Turned out his wife had filled up one of those Costco pools on the back deck while he was gone — big pool, maybe three feet tall. And instead of siphoning the water down the hill to the creek the way Brad had shown her, she just pulled the plug. Hundreds of gallons hit the back of his house at once. The whole house sank.

But here’s the thing: most of the time you don’t get hit with hundreds of gallons at once. You get hit one rain at a time. And over time, that bleeding will lead to structural issues.

Why it matters

Bleeding is the second step in the scope of work framework — right after safety and liability, before the baseline and the big three. You stop it first. Everything you build on top of an active bleed is wasted.

Most structural damage in houses I’ve bought traces back to water. Not termites, not bad framing, not age. Water. An unchecked bleed from 15 years ago is why the floor slopes. That’s also why you want to stop it before you renovate around it — otherwise you’re spending baseline money on a house that will be damaged again by the time it sells.

The questions you’re asking on a walkthrough: Are there retaining walls and are they failing? Is there underground drainage like French drains? Is there negative sloping toward the house? Underground streams in basements? Active plumbing leaks? Water stains still spreading? Any of those present and not already priced into the deal, the deal just changed.

How it shows up

Bleeding shows up in the scope of work as Phase 1 work — tabula rasa, before the renovation really starts. It happens alongside demo and structural work. Regrading and gutters, French drains, sump pumps, roofing, foundation waterproofing — these get done first.

Any cosmetic work that happens before the bleed is stopped is money thrown away. I’ll cut the big three budget before I cut stop-the-bleeding. There’s no sense putting new floors over a house that’s still drinking water through the foundation.

Related

structural damage, scope of work, tabula rasa, foundation, safety and liability, baseline