Cracked Houses

Same issue with gutters. The International Code Council, which writes the rules that govern construction, doesn't require gutters on new homes unless the house has a basement.

But the state-mandated soil report often notes that the builder needs to channel roof runoff away from the foundation. That means gutters, and a downspout, Dicks says.

It's another recommendation that mostly goes ignored.

After all, while the cost of gutters is estimated at less than $2,000 per house, the builder may well be multiplying that cost by every house in a development the size of Sun City Grand.

That adds up.

Ken Walsh, a professor of construction engineering and management at San Diego State University, was a practicing engineer in Phoenix for almost nine years. He says that builders aren't eschewing gutters out of ignorance -- it's a risk they've calculated and decided to take.

The fact is, Walsh says, even in areas with highly expansive soil, not every home will be affected. The soil can vary significantly even from lot to lot in the same development.

Maybe, in a group of 100 homes, 10 will have cracking and two will have serious problems. That still means 88 are more or less okay.

And while extensive testing would likely reveal exactly which lots will develop problems, the state doesn't mandate testing on each site, only that there be one test for the development.

Builders today, Walsh says, don't make money by carefully planning each site.

They do it by building hundreds of homes in a row, homes that are more or less identical.

They don't have time, or money, to engineer each individual home precisely for the lot it's being built on.

And their other solution -- building every house for the worst-case scenario, as if the soil were highly expansive everywhere -- is flawed for a similar reason.

"If a builder said, 'We're going to solve this problem, and have the best engineered solution so that these homes have no problem,' most of the homes in Arizona would be very overbuilt," Walsh says.

And that adds to cost.

And though better foundations might make more owners happy in the long run, it doesn't solve the problem of how to attract buyers when the builder down the street is offering granite countertops and a Jacuzzi for the same price . . . and both foundations look the same.

Instead, many builders' solution, Walsh says, has been to take the chance that some homeowners -- people like Bernice Kaleta -- may end up very, very unhappy.

Even when, in fact, it means ignoring their own engineers.

Take, for example, Bernice Kaleta's two-bedroom in Sun City Grand.

Typically, in construction-defect cases, the problems are apparent. Builders can't say they don't exist, so they blame their subcontractors.

And subcontractors, who are dependent on the builders for their livelihood, hire a lawyer to defend themselves, but don't really fight with fire, homeowners' attorneys say.

But something interesting happened in Bernice Kaleta's case, two years after she filed suit.

The soils report for Kaleta's property called for a post-tension slab, which is basically a foundation that's specially designed to withstand more pressure, like the pressure a home feels if it's on expanding, or collapsing, soil. But the builder, Del Webb, had instead used a floating slab, which is cheaper -- but likely to crack and move under the pressure of expanding soils.

Del Webb blamed the subcontractor. In this case, it was a local company called Bebout Concrete, according to court filings.

But this time, Bebout wasn't silent.

In January, Bebout's lawyer filed an affidavit noting that his company hadn't ignored the soils report. Instead, it had taken its direction from its employer, Del Webb.

Del Webb had gotten the soils report. And then, Bebout claimed, the builder had talked the engineers into running more tests -- and agreeing to a cheaper slab instead.

(Petroulakis, the Del Webb spokeswoman, declined to comment on Bebout's allegations.)

"I can tell you I was in meetings with various people from Del Webb with the soil engineers," Bebout explained in a deposition for the Kaleta case obtained by New Times, "where Del Webb was vehement about the fact that they did not want to spend the extra money on post-tension slabs."

And they didn't just do it at the Kaleta house, Bebout said.

They did it across parts of Sun City Grand, on hundreds of homes.

And they did it, Bebout alleged, in other Del Webb projects, like the sprawling development northeast of Sun City: Anthem.

Anthem has been plagued by soil problems. Nearly a dozen complaints have been filed with the Arizona Registrar of Contractors. There's a class-action suit pending.

All those problems, if Bebout is to be believed, could have been avoided.

According to a letter also entered into evidence by Bebout's attorney, Del Webb became aware of the soil problems in Anthem around 2001.

"Recommendations were made at the time to resolve the slab problem by revising the design criteria of the slab design," company president Jim Bebout wrote. "Webb rejected proposals . . . citing cost concerns over the proposed redesigns."