porch floor slanted for water runoff??

[mmccool719]

Our front porch has a corner of it that is slanted. It's concrete and it is not cracked. The house next door has a similar issue. One contractor said we have MAJOR settling while another said this was common practice for a home built to close to the water to allow drainage in a big storm. Any truth to that?

[DRJR]

Yes, its common to pitch the surface to direct water away from a structure.

[Nicholas]

...and another yes, I have seen some that are ridiculously inclined. When we bought our house, the PO had this decorative cement covering the porch, which caused water to flow in, and damaged some of the hardwood by the front door. I scraped up, removed and repaired, our pitch is about a half inch in eight feet.

[phil]

I think both are true. 1/8 per foot is all you need but sometimes the slope is excessive, but also there are a lot of houses with concrete stairs where the stairs lean away from the house or sink. Today it's cheaper to dig and put suitable rock and gravel but back when they had to be dug by hand maybe they weren't so likely to go as deep. You might notice a gap around the threshold or maybe you could check if any vertical parts seem to lean away from the house.

[1918ColonialRevival]

A slight pitch is normal, typically 1 inch for every 10 linear feet.

If the other house you were referring to was built by the same person and is about the same age, it may just be a case of an overzealous carpenter. Unless there's evidence of settling, I wouldn't automatically assume that's the problem.