Foundation footings installed?
 

I have a house that is about 110 years old. There is an addition on the back of the house, and the foundation is concrete, rather than brick. This picture is below an added on bathroom, and you can see the main drain pipe. You can also see concrete foundation. I don't know much about foundation, but it looks like whoever did this dug below the foundation. I'm in somewhat of a panic right now, because I imagine this could be a big problem. Is the back of my house losing its footing?

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4077/...272eb3752d.jpg

Could you post some pics from some different angles and locations?

~ 50 degrees left:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4102/...0a46b47475.jpg

And here's one turned about 100 degrees to the left:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4122/...47d2689850.jpg

I think if you are really worried about the integrity of the wall area you should call a structural engineer and have them take a look at it. Its usually not that expensive to get a little piece of mind or a game plan to fix.

I guess my most immediate concern is whether I should be really worried about it. I will get someone in here to look at it sometime soon, but is this a situation that is absolutely always a problem? My inspector didn't say anything, nor did the FHA inspector.

well
 

Yes it looks like they undermined the old footings. Most likele to gain headroom and not really knowing what they were doing.
You are not to undermine any footing in a 45 degree angle.

As suggested ,get an engineer, but first call back your inspector and see what the opinion was there, did they even go into the crawl space?

How is the soil in the area, the house will most likley not move. the only way to remedy the problem would be to pour concrete next to the footing all the way around the house using site built forms and rebar and 3/4 minus. Hope this will help

I am curious as to why my inspector didn't mention this. It's not mentioned anywhere in the report he prepared either. He did go down there, because he made mention of several unrelated things down there. I don't know anything about the soil around here, but I can say that the soil underneath the foundation feels a lot like concrete itself. So, I'm hoping it is OK. I'm assuming that correcting it would cause me to lose a decent amount on the house.

You said the house is 100 years old and the foundation looks to be in decent shape. As long as the soil is undisturbed you should be fine.

Is that a exterior wall or is there a addition on the other side of the wall?

One thing you could check is the wall that is above that part of the foundation, look for things like doors or windows way out of square. This would mean the wall is moving.

Good Luck

The foundation on the back of the house is concrete (pictured), but the rest is brick. The back was an addition. That is an exterior wall; it's the back corner of the house. As far as I can tell, someone dug below the concrete foundation around the entire back of the house. There is a door and one window on the back of the house, and they are both square.

The soil seems fine, I guess I'm worried that it could erode from underneath over a long period of time.