Drainage Issues

Now that the summer is solidly underway, it can feel like it’s “foundation damage season.” The hot, parched soil is pulling away from your foundation unless you actively counter the moisture loss, and some of your new spring foundation plants might not last the season. While shoring up your home’s foundation defenses is always a good idea, don’t just focus on your property. Think about home your neighbors or the surrounding area might be leading to foundation damage, too. Here are 3 Reasons to Install Drainage Solutions Along Your Fence

1. Your neighbor’s house is on a higher slope than yours.

Even in the suburbs, there are still hills and variations in soil height. While developers may have tried to create the perfect neighborhood drainage areas to counteract these problems, your house may still be downhill from where. That pushes water and soil onto your property. Excess water along your foundation can create unequal settling, and the extra pressure from new soil can knock the bottom of your fence out of position.

2. Surrounding drainage systems might be pushing water in your direction.

There are lots of DIY drainage solutions that are free for people to try. But many of those plans don’t alert people about the secondary harms of redirecting drainage or digging into the soil. If your neighbors are installing retaining walls or French drains, that’s going to change how effectively your own drainage systems work.

3. Neighboring construction projects can hurt your soil’s stability.

If someone is constructing a room addition, a basement, or an in-ground swimming pool nearby, that’s going to change how your soil drains and behaves. The soil pressure will change, and that will impact the settling rate at the side closest to the construction. While some settling is inevitable, the real damage happens when one corner of your house settles more than the other.

If you want to make sure your foundation is safe from general summer settling and neighborhood projects, contact us today to schedule an evaluation.

Many homes suffer from the problem of poor exterior drainage damaging the integrity of the foundation. This problem stems from several potential sources, and fixing it as soon as possible is the best way of keeping your home’s foundation in good repair.  Let’s discuss how poor exterior drainage can damage your foundation.

Downspouts Depositing Rainwater Next to the Foundation

One of the primary sources of poor drainage around the outside of a house has to do with the gutters and downspouts, and it’s not that the house does not have them. The problem is that the downspouts deposit rainwater from the roof right next to the foundation and the surrounding soil does not slope away from the house.

The solution to this problem is installing subsurface drainage pipes connected to the downspouts and leading water away from the foundation to a safe discharge area, for example, to the curb at the street or a natural low spot on the property. In some cases, installing a sump pump is necessary if the house is situated in a low spot.

Missing Gutters and Downspouts

In other cases, a house may entirely lack gutters or downspouts or have missing sections. This causes water from the roof to pour down around the perimeter of the house, softening soil under the foundation and leading to settlement of the slab or beam.

The solution here is installing a gutter and downspout system all around the house and then connecting the downspouts into buried drainage pipes or a sump pump to move water away from the foundation.

Poorly Installed Gutters and Downspouts

Another potential drainage problem happens when gutters and downspouts were installed incorrectly. Gutters need to slope slightly toward the downspouts, and if they don’t, water may spill out in the wrong places, creating soil erosion and foundation settlement.

If your foundation is sinking or cracking and you suspect exterior drainage problems, contact Steady House Foundation Repair and get expert help in finding the right solution.

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.