The Reasons for Underpinning

Many reasons could cause someone to consider underpinning a foundation. If you’re looking into underpinning your foundation, it’s a good idea to understand what reasons you may have for doing so. That way, you’ll know whether it’s a good option for you.

Although there are a few reasons to consider underpinning, these are the most common reasons for choosing to underpin your foundation.

House Settling

Settling can be a huge problem for your home. You may see a variety of issues in relation to house settling. That can include gaps between the floor and the wall, nail pops and even unlevel concrete in the worst cases.

If your home is settling, you’ll probably start to see these warning signs. The signs of settling can not only be unsightly but can actually become dangerous if you leave them for too long.

A useful way to avoid further house settling is to underpin your foundation. With the added stability brought along by the underpinning process, your house will stop settling because it’ll have something additional to lean on.

Poor Initial Construction

There are many steps to constructing a house. If any of those steps go wrong or have corners cut, you may end up with a poorly constructed home. That can have serious consequences down the line, especially if you don’t know about the poor construction.

Poor construction can include not tamping the soil down enough before pouring the foundation, not leveling the soil properly, and choosing a poor location for the home, among other things. You can use underpinning to fix some of these problems, especially if they would largely impact the foundation.

Especially if you purchased the home from another owner, it can sometimes be difficult to verify that the construction crew did their due diligence in construction. A foundation inspection from JES can help you verify whether you need foundation underpinning.

Change in Usage

There are many things a change in usage can mean. For example, a residence being converted into a business may need underpinning due to very heavy machinery and heavier foot traffic that may happen on a day-to-day basis.

A common change in usage occurs if you’re planning to convert your home from a one-story home to a multi-story home. Though this isn’t an incredibly common occurrence, it’s something your construction team should certainly be talking about.

Are you planning to change the way you use your home, whether into a business residence or into a multi-story home? If you are, it’s important that you get all the information you need from a JES expert, who can help you pave a path to the new usage.