Construction vibration damage to houses is less common than most people fear, but it does happen. Most work nearby shakes the floor enough to feel and to rattle a cup, yet stays well below the levels engineers link to cracking. The risk goes up with pile driving, vibratory rollers, blasting and demolition close to your home, and with old or fragile buildings. The construction vibration monitor turns your phone into a simple logger. It shows how strong the shaking really is and keeps a dated record you can take to the contractor.
How construction vibration damage happens
Heavy equipment sends waves through the ground. Your foundation and walls then move back and forth by a tiny amount. Engineers measure this as peak particle velocity (PPV): the fastest speed the ground or building moves during an event, in inches per second (in/s) or millimeters per second (mm/s). 1 in/s is 25.4 mm/s.
When shaking does cause harm, it tends to come in three steps:
- Cosmetic cracks. Hairline cracks in plaster, drywall, stucco or tile. By far the most common.
- Minor damage. Wider cracks, loose plaster, and tiles that crack or come loose.
- Structural damage. Cracks in the foundation, slabs, beams or columns. Rare near ordinary building work.
Caltrans (2020) also notes an indirect risk: soil settling from pile driving can damage buildings farther away than the shaking itself. If your home sits on loose fill or sand near heavy pile driving, ask whether a geotechnical engineer has looked at it.
Which construction work shakes the most
The Caltrans Transportation and Construction Vibration Guidance Manual (2020) lists typical peak vibration 25 feet from common equipment:
| Equipment | Typical PPV at 25 feet |
|---|---|
| Pile driver, impact or vibratory (reference hammer) | 0.65 in/s (16.5 mm/s) |
| Vibratory roller | 0.21 in/s (5.3 mm/s) |
| Large bulldozer | 0.089 in/s (2.3 mm/s) |
| Caisson drilling | 0.089 in/s (2.3 mm/s) |
| Loaded trucks | 0.076 in/s (1.9 mm/s) |
| Jackhammer | 0.035 in/s (0.9 mm/s) |
| Small bulldozer | 0.003 in/s (0.08 mm/s) |
Bigger pile hammers shake harder. Three things stand out:
- Distance matters most. By the Caltrans formula, doubling the distance roughly halves the vibration. In the manual’s own example, a vibratory roller 50 feet from homes built in the 1940s gives about 0.11 in/s: strongly felt indoors, but well under the damage guideline for older homes.
- Vibratory pile drivers surge at start and stop. Caltrans explains that they shake hardest while starting up and shutting down, as they pass through the natural frequency of the soil and pile. That’s when most complaints happen.
- Everyday equipment is rarely a problem. Caltrans says typical construction equipment usually doesn’t harm people or buildings. The exceptions are pile drivers, vibratory rollers and pavement crack-and-seat work.
A Caltrans technical advisory in the manual puts most construction vibration in the 10 to 30 Hz range, centered around 15 Hz. That’s mostly within what a phone can measure. See vibration frequency explained for what Hz means.
How much vibration is too much?
Caltrans (2020) gives these guideline values for damage, as peak velocity:
| Building type | Single events (transient) | Continuous or frequent |
|---|---|---|
| Extremely fragile, ruins, ancient monuments | 0.12 in/s (3.0 mm/s) | 0.08 in/s (2.0 mm/s) |
| Fragile buildings | 0.2 in/s (5.1 mm/s) | 0.1 in/s (2.5 mm/s) |
| Historic and some old buildings | 0.5 in/s (12.7 mm/s) | 0.25 in/s (6.4 mm/s) |
| Older homes | 0.5 in/s (12.7 mm/s) | 0.3 in/s (7.6 mm/s) |
| New homes | 1.0 in/s (25.4 mm/s) | 0.5 in/s (12.7 mm/s) |
Continuous means sources like pile drivers, vibratory rollers and compactors. Transient means single events, such as one blast. The German standard DIN 4150-3 gives 5 mm/s at a home’s foundation for slow vibration (1 to 10 Hz), rising to 15 to 20 mm/s at 50 to 100 Hz. The US Bureau of Mines study RI 8507 (Siskind and others, 1980) gives 0.5 in/s for plaster on wood lath and 0.75 in/s for drywall, for blasts below 40 Hz.
Now compare that with how people feel it. Caltrans rates steady vibration as distinctly perceptible from 0.04 in/s (1.0 mm/s) and strongly perceptible from 0.10 in/s (2.5 mm/s). The guideline for older homes, 0.3 in/s, is three times higher again. So you can feel work next door clearly, even lose sleep over it, while the house itself isn’t at risk.
These are guidelines, not laws, and your city or the project contract may set its own limit. Staying under one doesn’t guarantee no damage, and going over doesn’t prove damage happened. The construction vibration limits page has the full tables.
Is that crack from the construction?
All houses crack. Lumber and concrete shrink, clay soil swells and shrinks with the seasons, and walls move a little with heat every day. Caltrans notes that every home gets normal shrinkage and settling cracks. So a crack you’ve just noticed isn’t proof of damage.
Clues that point to the construction:
- Dated photos show the crack wasn’t there before the work started.
- It appeared or grew on a day your log shows Strong or Very strong events.
- Several things changed at once: doors began to stick, tiles cracked, pictures shifted.
- Damage gets worse closer to the site. Caltrans says cracks that lessen with distance from the source may be caused by it.
Clues that point elsewhere:
- Homes near and far from the site have the same cracks. Caltrans says that usually means heat or settling.
- The cracks are only on walls that face the sun, a sign of thermal cracking.
- The crack opens and closes with the seasons.
To track a crack, photograph it with a ruler or coin in the frame and the date visible. Mark each end lightly in pencil with the date. If it grows past the mark, you’ll know. A crack monitor, a small gauge fixed across the crack, shows even small movement.
How to check your house with your phone
- Start before the heavy work does. Log for an hour on a quiet evening, so you know what normal looks like.
- On work days, lay the phone flat, screen up, on the lowest floor, next to the wall facing the site. Concrete or tile is best. Keep it off rugs and away from foot traffic.
- Plug it in, turn off Low Power Mode or battery saver, and keep the page open with the screen on.
- Tap “Start logging”. On iPhone, tap Allow when Safari asks for Motion & Orientation access.
- Keep a short diary of what the crew is doing and when. Timestamped photos work well.
- At the end of the day, stop the log and tap “Download PDF report” and “Download CSV”.
Reading the log
Each event shows the time, the peak in mm/s, the frequency in Hz and how long it lasted. The pattern often points to the source:
| What you see | Likely source |
|---|---|
| Long, steady events at one frequency | Vibratory roller, compactor or vibratory pile driver |
| Long runs of evenly spaced jolts | Impact pile driving |
| Irregular bursts | Breakers, demolition or digging |
| Single sharp bangs minutes apart | Trucks over steel road plates, or dropped loads |
| Events outside working hours | Probably not the site: traffic, your own equipment or neighbors |
For night-time events, see why a house shakes at night.
Know the phone’s limits too. It estimates the peak as RMS × √2, which is exact for smooth, steady shaking but can read low for sharp jolts like pile hammer blows. It also can’t see vibration faster than about 30 Hz. So a Strong reading during pile driving may hide a higher true peak.
What to do before and during the work
- Ask for a pre-construction survey. Caltrans describes surveys of nearby buildings before and after work. If the contractor won’t do one, take dated photos and video of every room, the outside walls and the foundation.
- Ask what limit applies. Ask the site manager which vibration limit the project uses and whether anyone monitors near your home. Your city’s building or permit office can help too.
- Ask for notice before pile driving, vibratory compaction, demolition or blasting.
- Ask about gentler methods. Drilled or pressed-in piles shake the ground much less than driven ones. Rollers can often run without vibration close to homes.
When to call a professional
- A structural engineer: if cracks are wider than a hairline, you see cracks in the foundation, floors start to slope, or doors and windows suddenly jam.
- A professional vibration monitoring company: for a dispute or a claim, for old, fragile or historic homes, or if your log often shows Strong or Very strong events. Their calibrated seismographs record the true peak at your foundation. On some projects the contractor pays, so ask first.
- Your insurer and the contractor: tell both in writing as soon as you find new damage.
Your phone log is for your own records and to start a conversation. It’s a good guide, not a certified measurement. Record a baseline today with the construction vibration monitor, then compare your peaks with the limits for homes.