Cable coming from foundation...What is it?

[David Nasser]

Southern Calif. home built in 2005.
What is it and what is the write up ?

[Joe Keresztury]

David, In my area we pretty much have all slab foundations with mostly rebar steel reinforcement and some post tension slabs. I'm not that familar with post tension foundations but from your picture this apears to be a blowout in a post tension slab. That anchor shown should be imbedded in the slab. 5-10 days after a post tension slab is poured and before it is totally cured, the contractor comes and tightens the strands/cable to within 7% of the engineers designed strength of between around 25,000 and 35,000 psi. Looks like there's concrete on the anchor here (in the pic) so it was probably stretched/tightened and imbedded as needed than had a blow out. Appears that cable and anchor have been exposed for a while. The size of the hole in the slab looks about the size of the anchor, another indication of a blowout. Were there any indications of a blowout inside. Of course the builder and or homeowner probably patched the slab with an epoxy and then re did the flooring. This could have been engineer approved or maybe not. The builder should have addressed the issue and resolved the problem with the original licensed/registered engineer that was paid to design and certify the slab in the first place.
But I also don't see why if they did resolve inside issues why they didn't address the outside issues, the exposed, rusting outside slab reinforcement cable, wedge and anchor along with a good sized hole in the slab, it's a smoking gun that you should address to your client.
This (your situation) is one situation that I would use the overused comment-
"recommend qualified specialist or engineer to review". I would highly recommend an engineer review and if possible the original engineer!! Something has been apparently done inside with this issue to resolve problems since you don't note any inside issues. The reason I say this is that in your pic the hole in the pic goes to the bottom of the stucco, being the top of the slab, which leaves me to believe that the possible (most likely) blowout came up thru the slab inside.
Also from your pic there is not the required 6" slab exposure, which of course is even more of an issue since there is a hole in the slab....

[John M. Hetz]

David:

I have done many pt slabs and decks in SoCal and Joe's explanation nailed it. One other possibility that I doubt that you can determine at this point in time is that there was an anchor bolt or holdown that was missed in the initial placement of reinforcing and bolts and it was retrofitted by drilling and epoxying a replacement in and the pt cable was damaged and blew out. Joe's recommendation for a structural engineer's observation and recommendation is the right call to protect you.

John