Foundation Repair

Slab foundations are inexpensive and easy to build, making them a popular foundation choice for many. Unfortunately, they are capable of settling just like any of the slabs on your property. 

• How Slab Foundations Settle  

Slab foundations settle in the same way your driveway or patio slabs settle—due to soil displacement. A negative yard grade and poor yard drainage all contribute to foundation settling, even with slab foundations. The signs are a lot harder to detect, since homeowners can’t observe the damage to their slab foundation in the same way they can their crawl space or basement. 

Besides soil washout, a big factor in foundation soil displacement is pressure. Sandy soils are a lot looser and shifty than clay soils, and because they are less dense, displacement is easy when they have to support large weights. As a house is used over the years and heavy furniture is moved about, the foundation has to support more weight. Over time, this does affect the soil.  

• How Settled Slab Foundations Are Repaired 

Like any slab on your property, you don’t have to replace a slab foundation once it settles. JES can stabilize and even lift your settling slab foundation using slab piers. They are steel rods that transfer the weight of the house to the competent, load-bearing soils below. Because your slab will no longer rely on loose soil, slab foundations will perpetually support your foundation. 

PolyRenewal™ can also be used on a slab foundation. Polyurethane foam is able to support over 100 tons of weight, so it’s more than capable of lifting your foundation. Polyurethane foam can’t always be used for slab foundations, and, sometimes, slab piers are required. You would have to talk to your local foundation expert to determine which one you need for your settling slab. 

The specialists at JES Foundation Repair offer a wide variety of solutions for you, depending on what part of your foundation needs repair. If you are looking to realign and stabilize your bowed-in foundation walls, you may want to look into the IntelliBrace™ system, JES Foundation Repair Wall Anchors, or the Carbon Fiber Wall Repair. The IntelliBrace consists of a number of incredibly sturdy I-beams that are installed on the inside of your foundation wall to prevent them from buckling inwards even more. The JES Foundation Repair Wall Anchors are installed underground, directly into the hard, densely packed soil so that it can support your foundation wall from below. The least invasive method goes to the Carbon Fiber system, which has a lightweight, sleek, and non-stretchy design constructed to repair cracks and even provide your foundation wall with much needed stability.

If you are mainly experiencing sagging foundation floors, you may want to look into the various Pier Systems or even the Crawl Space IntelliJack™ Support System. There are 3 pier systems to choose from: the Slab, Helical, and Push Pier Systems. Each pier system is catered to both the type of foundation problem, as well as the space constraints of your landscape. Although the IntelliJack™ was made primarily for sagging floors due to crawl space problems, it can also dually work to support foundation floors that are sinking as well. 

Sometimes, the amount of water that builds up around your foundation walls can result in immense pressure against your foundation structure. The SMART VENT Flood Vents offered at JES Foundation Repair provides an alternate pathway for this water so that it does not accumulate onto your foundation wall. This can prevent buckling and structural damage. This water can then be removed via other drainage systems in your home.

A foundation settles because it cannot rely on the soil layer for support anymore. When the foundation was built, the soil was even and dense, but due to erosive elements, it will have shifted over the years. The soil in Roanoke is sandy, so the more it erodes, the more easily it is displaced by a large amount of weight, meaning that the weight of the house itself was contributing toward the settling. To stabilize a foundation, the house needs to be held up by something other than a loose, uneven layer of soil. This is where the helical piers come in.

Helical piers are steel rods that have helix blades welded to one end of the shaft. A hole is either drilled or excavated where the pier needs to be installed and then the rod is mechanically drilled into the soil. Anybody that looks at a helical pier might think that they are too thin to support an entire house, but the truth is that the helical piers aren’t the only ones that will work to support the home. The piers will be driven down until reaching load-bearing soil.

The deeper down you go, the tougher and denser the soil is. Load-bearing soils are dense enough to support the house, unlike the shifty soils that originally failed the house. When the helical piers are attached to the home, they help transfer the weight of the foundation to the competent soil layers. This is how helical piers, despite their slim frame, are able to stabilize a settling foundation.

Determining the warning signs of foundation problems tends to be a bit tricky for homeowners. It can often be confused with general structural issues that can be fixed with simple solutions that you can do right at home. However, DIY repairs are always highly discouraged because it can be risky and cause potential injury.

Some of the warning signs of foundation problems include: 

• Sinking settlements
• Tilted chimneys
• Buckled or cracked walls
• Wood rot around your home perimeter
• Sagging floors
• Uneven doorways and window frames

The foundation of your home is named the foundation for a reason. It is responsible for maintaining many of the structures within your home. Usually, when there is a problem sign in one place, another may appear. It is important to keep an eye out before more drastic problems occur.

It can be tempting to try and compartmentalize the damage you see done to your home. For example, take the kind of damage that can be done to your chimney. Under the best of circumstances, you’d want to hope that a cracked chimney isn’t a sign of more significant damage somewhere else in your home. 

Think of Your Home as A Whole 

Unfortunately, thinking of your home as a disconnected collection of parts is a dangerous way to think. Each part of your home works in tandem with the others. As such, certain parts of your home can indicate damage to the others, even if they don’t seem to be connected at first glance. This is the case with your chimney. If you notice your chimney has started to crack, it is likely that your foundation is suffering as well. In most cases, a cracked chimney is a sign that the damage your foundation is currently experiencing has reached the point where it’s going to be especially expensive to repair. 

Understanding the Water Damage in and Around Your Home 

That said, you can never be certain as to what kind of damage you’re dealing with until you’ve had a chance to look for yourself. As such, if you notice your chimney has started to crack, you’ll want to reach out to the professionals in your area. These parties can walk through your home with you and help determine whether or not you have foundation damage on your hands. Should you have a problem, these parties can help you excavate your foundation and address the problem as appropriately as possible. 

If you do want to repair your chimney, at the end of the day, you have the option to confine your repairs to that structure. However, if you want those repairs to last for more than a short while, you’ll want to try and determine whether or not something is amiss with your foundation as well. The longer you leave foundation damage to fester, the more problems it can cause for the rest of your home.

If you’re dealing with a settling foundation due to soil washout, then you might want to know what your options are. If you do some research, then you’ll hear talk of concrete piers for your foundation, which are meant to stabilize your home so that it won’t settle anymore. 

However, concrete piers as a foundation support system are outdated and unreliable. There are plenty of modern options for your foundation that last longer than concrete piers and actually give you bang for your buck.  

• Why Concrete Piers Don’t Work 

Concrete piers are not capable of lifting your settling foundation. The way they are made and put into place does not allow contractors to exert the required pressure to lift your foundation back into place. What they are meant to do is simply stop the settling and keep your home in its current position; however, this isn’t even a guarantee. This is because the foundation should not rely on the pier system itself to stay stable but rather on the load-bearing soil deep beneath your property. 

Concrete piers are not able to reach load-bearing soil depths because they cannot be made long enough to do so. The longer and thinner the concrete pier is, the less weight it’s able to support due to its low tensile strength. Making it bigger won’t help either since the bigger the pier is, the more likely it is to experience skin friction. Once a concrete pier feels the pressure caused by the skin friction, it crumbles under the weight of the house. 

• What You Can Do About Foundation Settling  

At JES, we offer multiple solutions that are able to reliably stabilize your foundation and possibly lift it back into place as well. We have helical and push piers, as well as slab piers for slab-on-grade. They are long rods made of galvanized steel that are attached to your foundation and buried deep underground. Because of their sleek design, they are capable of reaching load-bearing soil and transferring the weight of your foundation to those soils. These pier systems can mechanically exert pressure onto your foundation until it’s stable once more. 

If you have a slab foundation, then we have another repair option for you. You can use PolyRenewal™ to lift your foundation back into place like you would any other slab. It depends on the needs of your home, but utilizing polyurethane foam can lift your foundation until it’s even again without the need for excavation or heavy machinery. The device we use to inject PolyRenewal™ is handheld and small, meaning that it can be used in smaller areas, like your bathroom, if need be.

Wall anchors are one of the most common repair products used to prevent bowing walls from collapsing and return them to their original positioning. Installing these anchors is relatively straightforward, and our team has the tools, skills, and training to give you the results that you need from your wall anchor installation process.

It starts with an assessment of your home and the damaged walls, of course, at which point we will map out the ideal placement for each wall anchor and figure out how many will be needed to get the right result. Once we know where the anchors are going, excavation will begin both inside and outside of your home. The earth anchors will need to be placed in the earth around 10 feet from your home, while holes will be drilled into your foundation walls, so that steel rods can be driven through and connected to the earth anchors. Once they are connected to the anchors, the wall plates can be mounted and connected.

Once the wall anchors have been fully installed, the excavation points can be covered and the interior plates can be disguised. At this point, the damaged wall will have been stabilized and there will be no risk of the wall collapsing expectedly. However, if you are to straighten the wall in question, you will need to have the wall anchors tightened or adjusted a few times. Professionals will do this slowly to prevent causing more damage to the wall.