I'm no engineer either, but it seems logical to me that a building would not even notice mild to moderate uniform sinking, but that differential sinking could s

I'm no engineer either, but it seems logical to me that a building would not even notice mild to moderate uniform sinking, but that differential sinking could split the building in half. Also, I guess that differential sinking can be detected before catastrophic failure if the sink rate were measured on two or more points on the building. If the south side is sinking at 2mm/year while the north side is sinking at 0.2mm/year, that sounds like a recipe for disaster that you don't need xray eyes to see.