How to Tell Your Home Needs Foundation Repair

We all know that your home cannot be stronger than its foundation and this is the reason every homeowner needs to give careful attention to foundation repair. The problem that most people face is that they ignore some subtle or not so subtle warning signs such as settling, sinking or cracks. When homeowners fail to treat these signs as emergencies, the problem will continue to persist and deteriorate to such an extent that they finally jeopardize the safety as well as structural integrity of your home. If the problems at the foundation are left to increase in their severity, a homeowner ends up spending too much money in foundation repairs than they would have spent ordinarily.

Signs of foundation trouble: Concrete is prone to cracks by its nature but this should not be an excuse to ignore foundation cracking in your home. Even that small hairline crack, when not attended to early enough, can very easily expand to cause more trouble at a later date. There are different causes for foundation cracks that include some minor unnoticeable earthquakes, issues to do with ground water, unstable grounds as well as the age of the house.

For you to figure out whether your house is due for foundation repair, you need to ask yourself whether there are any walls in your house that are cracked, whether there are cracks big enough for a dime to fit in, whether doors feel like they are fatter while the frames have shrunk and refuse to close properly and whether there are floors that are bulging and look fattened in some areas. If you have any positive answers to the above questions, you are safer calling a certified foundation repair contractor to check it out for you. You also need to be a bit careful to check for other signs that include separating of walls, uneven flooring, cracks on the floor or when the chimney appears like it is leaning.

Repair methods: The good news is that when it is tackled early, foundation repair can be accomplished easily. There are different ways of doing this delicate job but the most common ones are:

Piering: This method involves the installation of vertical columns or piers that eventually get to support the foundation’s vertical beams. Concrete and tensile steel are used together with reinforced concrete structures. The foundation repair contractor will be able to advice on the best way to attain the required stability.

Slab-jacking: Slab-jacking is perhaps the simplest form of foundation repair to make sure that things are corrected before they become too bad. This method may look simple but it is extremely effective when done correctly. Slab-jacking deals with the cracks that are on the foundation directly where holes are drilled into the foundation walls and thereafter reinforced through the injection of a special organic mixture.