This happened to me a while back but I thought it would be good to share to possibly save someone 10s of thousands of dollars.
I had some foundation cracks and a few small cracks in the drywall of my house. I got worried and called out a foundation company that offered a “free” inspection. The inspector proceeded to tell me that my house was “sinking and breaking in half like the titanic” and I needed $25k in repairs. I became very stressed. With a repair that large, I wanted a second opinion.
I hired a proper structural engineer. It wasn’t cheap, he charged me $450 to look around for about 15 minutes. I had told him what the foundation company had told me and he laughed. I ended up needing no repairs besides a point and retuck. The cracks in the brick? He said those were cracks from thermal expansion. He saved me about $24.5k.
I later read that a lot of the “free” foundation inspectors operate on a commission basis. They will always tell you that you will need foundation work, otherwise they would be going out of business. Beware of free inspections.
I have been trying to find a structural engineer to come look at my garage but I don’t even know where to look. Google wasn’t extremely helpful. Any advice on how to find structural engineers in my area?
I’d check with medium sized contractors or smaller 1-10 person) architecture firms. Very few of us (PEs) deal with small/residential work, but those are the people who are likely to need or know an engineer that does small jobs. The local building official might know somebody, but depending on their risk aversion they might not be willing to say for fear that they have (officially) recommended someone.