Homeowner trying to get his house condemned because he says he’s living over a sinkhole

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - A man is trying to get his own house condemned because he said it was built over a sinkhole.

Frank Besednjak built his house in Mt. Washington 30 years ago. When his walls started cracking and his doors stopped opening, he started investigating.

He learned he has been living over a sinkhole that is swallowing his house inches at a time.

Two years ago, Besednjak started remodeling his home, but all the work kept having to be redone days after.

“When the builders would do a wall of drywall, a couple of days later it would crack,” Besednjak said. “So I’d call them back and say there’s something wrong you guys aren’t doing a good job, you need to redo this. Then they’d come back and redo it, then it would happen again, and they’d come back and redo it, and they tell me there’s something wrong with your house.”

It’s something that’s still happening. In fact, he discovered a new crack as he was showing us his house.

“The white one way up on top,” Besednjak said. “This is the first time I saw it, so it’s new.”

During the remodel, he felt something was off about his basement floor.

“Tore the carpet out and that’s when I discovered this huge crack,” he said.

He actually drilled holes into his basement floor to see what was under it.

“The basement concrete ends and then several inches below that is where the rocks are,” Besednjak said. “So basically this concrete is floating above the actual dirt and rocks that were put there for the foundation.”

He already had sinkhole insurance, so when he discovered his area has potential for sinkholes, he filed a claim.

The agency disagreed.

“I didn’t believe it, so I hired a geologist,” Besednjak said. “And he said they never should’ve built this house here. What he found out was that the sinkhole was about 55 ft wide, and the house is 65 ft wide.”

In order for the insurance to pay off the house, he needs to have the property condemned.

So he’s waiting for the city to do just that. In the meantime, he has to live in a house that’s sinking little by little.

“Every once in a while, my cats will look at something, I hear a little bit of noise and I’m thinking, ‘Okay, should I dart out the door with my cats?’” he said.

Besednjak has an earthquake alarm that will alert him if the house moves or shakes suddenly.

He’s also measuring with a laser how much the house is sinking.

“So on April 23rd, this is where it levels out at,” he said. “Then again on May 21st, I marked it and it went down about a half an inch. And then I did it again yesterday and I noticed it’s actually dropped a little bit since then.”

He said it’s dropped almost an inch since April 23rd.

Copyright 2023 WAVE. All rights reserved.