What is Hydrostatic Pressure?

Hydrostatic pressure is, to put it simply, the combined weight of the soil around your home and the water that it contains. This is a perfectly natural and normal force that all homes have to contend with. In fact, architects and contractors specifically design and build homes with it in mind. Hydrostatic pressure only becomes a problem when it reaches a level that the property in question can no longer withstand. At this point, it can cause very serious issues for a home as a whole.

Excessive hydrostatic pressure can be caused by a number of things, from poor drainage to unusually high levels of flooding around a home. Once it builds to a certain level, it will exert a huge amount of lateral pressure on your home’s foundation and basement walls. The issue with this is that concrete has huge compressive strength, but very low tensile strength. In short, concrete cannot stretch, and when faced with strong lateral pressure, it will start to buckle and crack. This can lead to fragmentation in a property’s foundation and bowing walls.

This has a knock-on effect on the rest of a property, as your foundation or basement walls are absolutely crucial to the stability of your home and provide a lot of support. That’s why it is important to control the level of hydrostatic pressure that your home faces by ensuring that you take proper precautions and manage moisture to the best of your ability. This means ensuring that you have robust drainage solutions in place. By preventing perimeter saturation, you should be able to keep the levels of hydrostatic pressure around your home to manageable levels.