When you've been doing Costa Mesa home inspections and have been in the construction field for a long time and then you go into construction and then property inspections in Costa Mesa you learn to spot the telltale signs of construction defects. Take ceramic tile and slab cracks; you have a kitchen with 12" square tiles and the tile is cracked. Is it cracked in the corner of the tile, across the tile, or across several tiles? Does the crack follow a trajectory from one end of the room to the other? Answer: if just one tile is cracked but across the entire piece then possibly the installer did not put enough mortar underneath, leaving voids. When weight is put on the voids, the one piece of tile cracks. On the other hand, if the crack follows continuously on to other tiles then maybe the slab is cracked underneath and the tile is reflecting this crack. You can check it to see if there is enough mortar under the tile by tapping the tile with the handle end of a screw driver. It will sound hollow if there is insufficeint mortar. If you have an elongated continuous crack, you might want to go outside and look at the foundation and see if there are any cracks in the vicinity of where the interior crack ends at the wall. If you have any questions about this you can email me at sedillo@cox.net. There are other teltale signs that I will discuss in another blog later. Stay tuned. Mike