Why You Shouldn’t Wait to Repair a Sink­ing Foundation

Dec 20, 2012 • By Matthew Stock.

Let’s face it, we all put things off and most of the time the con­se­quences don’t amount to much. Put off doing laun­dry and you wear mis­matched socks to work. Put off the gro­cery shop­ping and you get cre­ative for din­ner with a can of toma­to soup and half a pack­age of hot dogs. No big deal, right?

True enough, but there are plen­ty of instances where pro­cras­ti­na­tion can lead to big trou­ble and one of the worst exam­ples is putting off nec­es­sary repairs to a sink­ing foundation.

The Con­se­quences of Delay­ing Repairs to a Sink­ing Foundation

In an ear­li­er arti­cle, we talked about the costs of putting off repairs to foun­da­tion walls that have bowed or cracked due to lat­er­al pres­sure from over-sat­u­rat­ed soil. This kind of foun­da­tion wall dam­age is seri­ous and will con­tin­ue to get worse and more cost­ly to repair the longer it is neglected.

There’s anoth­er kind of struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age with even more seri­ous con­se­quences, the kind that occurs when the home’s foun­da­tion sinks or drops.

Dam­age of this type can occur for sev­er­al rea­sons, such as improp­er prepa­ra­tion of the sub­soil when a building’s foun­da­tion is orig­i­nal­ly exca­vat­ed. Most com­mon­ly, though, foun­da­tions sink or drop because of expan­sion and sub­se­quent con­trac­tion of the soil that sup­ports them. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this has been a more fre­quent occur­rence in 2012 because of the ongo­ing drought.

Although dif­fer­ent types of soil react dif­fer­ent­ly to mois­ture extremes, the clay soil com­mon in the Mid­west is what is known as expan­sive soil, that is, it swells when sat­u­rat­ed with water. Espe­cial­ly in homes where exte­ri­or water man­age­ment is not prac­ticed by keep­ing gut­ters clean and extend­ing down­spouts away from the house, the soil around and under the foun­da­tion expands dur­ing wet peri­ods. When extend­ed dry con­di­tions occur, this over-sat­u­rat­ed soil shrinks, caus­ing the foun­da­tion foot­ings to drop and the foun­da­tion walls, along with parts of the above-ground struc­ture, to crack and separate.

It’s usu­al­ly pret­ty easy to tell when a foun­da­tion has sunk. Ear­ly signs of this type of struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age include jammed win­dows and doors and dry­wall cracks in the above-ground liv­ing space. More advanced or severe dam­age is indi­cat­ed by wide cracks in exte­ri­or walls or even sep­a­ra­tion of one sec­tion of a house, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­mon in addi­tions, from the rest.

Dropped or sunken foun­da­tions can only be repaired by under­pin­ning, a process in which a sup­port called a pier is placed under the foun­da­tion, lift­ing it back up to lev­el and sta­bi­liz­ing it. There are sev­er­al types of piers, includ­ing con­crete and heli­cal piers, but the pre­ferred method is to use a hydrauli­cal­ly dri­ven steel pier, some­times called a ​“push” pier.

We have writ­ten about the process of installing push piers in detail in an ear­li­er arti­cle. What is impor­tant to know about the tim­ing of such repairs is that the dam­age is usu­al­ly pro­gres­sive, start­ing out rel­a­tive­ly small and wors­en­ing as the soil under the foun­da­tion con­tin­ues to shrink and the foun­da­tion con­tin­ues to drop. The good news is that even a severe­ly dam­aged foun­da­tion can still be under­pinned and restored to level.

The bad news? The worse the dam­age gets the more piers are required to repair it and, log­i­cal­ly, the cost of the repair increas­es with each pier that is installed. A sunken cor­ner that is detect­ed and repaired ear­ly might be fixed with four or five piers; an entire wing of the house that drops over time might require sev­er­al times that many.

Also, above-ground dam­ages will increase as the foun­da­tion is neglect­ed and costs will rise accordingly.

So, when it comes to your home, pro­cras­ti­nate all you want when it comes to weed­ing the lawn or clean­ing out the garage but ignore foun­da­tion dam­age at your per­il – and that of your bank account. 

A spe­cial­ist in struc­tur­al foun­da­tion repair will be able to spot the signs of a sink­ing foun­da­tion and rec­om­mend the nec­es­sary repairs. At U.S. Water­proof­ing, our experts have been trained to detect struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age, includ­ing sink­ing foun­da­tions, and to pro­pose a plan of repair that is both per­ma­nent and cost-effec­tive, so why not ask for their free advice?

Tags: foundation repair, foundation damage, foundation repairs, structural foundation damage, structural foundation repair, sinking foundations, sinking foundation

Previous Article | Learning Center Archive | Next Article