Texas homes are well-known for their foundation troubles. Every home has a few hairline cracks in the concrete, and soaker hoses running around the edge of a home, even where there aren’t any plants, are a common sight. Let’s talk about 3 ways water can damage your home’s foundation.
A lot of it has to do with the weather. The are’s multi-year drought, intermixed with heavy torrential rain, is putting stress on everyone’s concrete foundation. Water can cause a lot of damage that’s hard to spot. Here are three ways it might be hurting your foundation behind the scenes:
1. Poor drainage makes water sit against your house.
If your home is at the bottom of an incline, that’s bad news for your foundation. When water pools against the side of your house, eventually it will find its way into the basement. It will also wear any the dirt and slip under the concrete slab. That replaces the semi-stable dirt support around your foundation with flowing water and mud.
2. Droughts change the consistency of the soil around the slab.
Not all of the soil on your property has the same composition. Some of it can be rocky and have easy drainage. Some of your soil might be more like clay. When the soil is frequently, consistently watered, those different types of soil offer relatively equal amounts of foundation support. But when it’s been months since the last good downpour, some dirt will dry out and contract more than the rest. Instead of equally distributing its weight on the soil, then, some parts face more stress and are more likely to crack.
3. Without good gutters, rain will fall against your slab’s seams.
Gutters don’t just redirect water away from your front door. They also make sure water doesn’t free fall from your roof against the concrete. Without them, the pressure would wear down the concrete. It can push the soil around the sides of your foundation away and push more water under the slab. If water falls in front of your garage, it will also work its way between your house and driveway slabs of concrete.
Fix poor drainage and water problems before you have to fix your home’s foundation. Contact us at Steady House Foundation Repair to get started.