My dad had a problem with their old house in Texas. The engineers had done the appropriate drilling and soil samples. That clearly indicated minimums for the foundation. After cracks started to appear in the new house (this was built about 4 years ago), he started to get concerned. He bought a surveyors level and started measuring. The house would shift about 4 inches or so between dry and wet conditions. The neighborhood was built on clay fed by underground streams that exist only during wet seasons. Dry it's fine, wet season showed up and house would move. Make popping noises and such.

Dad went to the city and got a copy of the building plans and such including the design of the foundation. Took some effort to dig down along the foundation on a couple of sides of the house. But the tape measure didn't lie. The contractor for the foundation went cheap and did not build to the specified requirements by a large margin. All the home in the neighborhood had been done this way. All had major problems.

One fix was to tear into the inside of the house, drill trhough the concrete foundation and install pilings. A major mess since this has to be done from the inside of the house that you live in. The builder started to buy back homes and bulldozed them. A real mess for people though.

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