Foundation heave is when the ground under your house pushes up and it can seriously damage your home. Foundation heave often happens in places with soil that expands when wet and in climates with significant changes in moisture levels. Spotting the signs can save you a lot of money and keep your home safe. We’ll look at the signs of foundation heave, explain how it’s different from foundation settlement, and what you can do to fix or prevent it.
Signs of Foundation Heave
Foundation heave shows up in several straightforward ways. Knowing these signs can help you fix problems before they get worse. Here’s what to look for:
- Cracked Walls and Floors: The most unmistakable signs of foundation heave are visible cracks in your walls and floors. These cracks usually appear in specific patterns, like stair-step cracks in brick walls or horizontal cracks in concrete walls. You might also notice floor cracks that appear overnight, meaning the soil under your foundation is swelling and pushing everything upward.
- Cracks in Foundation Slabs: Cracks in the foundation slab are a clear sign of heave. These cracks can be big or small and often occur when the slabs lift or separate. Checking your foundation for these cracks can help you spot problems early on.
- Interior Wall Cracks: Interior wall cracks, particularly those that appear suddenly and without apparent cause, can signal foundation heave. These cracks are typically wider at the top and narrow towards the bottom, indicating that the foundation is lifting unevenly.
- Uneven or Bulging Floors: When the ground under a house swells, it can make the floors uneven or bulgy, usually in basements and ground floors. If you see parts of your floor higher than others or a noticeable bulge, it could mean you have foundation heave.
- Sticking Doors and Windows: Foundation heave can mess up the structure of your house, causing doors and windows to stick or be hard to open and close. This happens because the foundation shifts and warps the frames. If you notice several doors and windows sticking, it’s time to look into it or get a foundation inspection.
- Gaps Around Doors and Windows: You might also notice gaps around doors and windows because the foundation is lifting unevenly, making the frames pull away from the walls. This can be a big problem because it lets drafts in and makes your home less energy efficient.
- Tilting or Leaning Chimneys: If your chimney starts to lean away from the house, it’s a big warning sign for foundation heave. Chimneys are heavy, so they’re more likely to move when the ground beneath them expands. A leaning chimney is dangerous and needs fixing right away.
- Bowed Walls: Bowed walls, especially in basements, are a common sign of foundation heave. The pressure from the expanding soil can push the walls inward. This intense issue puts a lot of stress on your home’s foundation and needs to be fixed quickly to avoid more damage.
- Water Pooling Around the Foundation: Too much water collecting around your home’s foundation can expand the soil and push up against the house. Lousy drainage and heavy rain can wet the soil, causing it to swell even more.
- Misaligned Molding and Trim: If the molding and trim in your home don’t line up correctly or it looks like they’re pulling away from the walls, it might be a sign of foundation heave.
Differences Between Foundation Heave and Settlement
Understanding the difference between foundation heave and foundation settlement is crucial for finding the right solution. Both issues involve the foundation moving, but they happen for different reasons and show different signs.
Causes of Foundation Heave
Foundation heave happens when the ground underneath your house starts to push upwards. This issue mainly occurs in areas where the soil is rich in clay. Clay-rich soil is unique because it can absorb much water like a sponge. When this soil gets wet, it swells up and expands. Imagine how a sponge grows when it soaks up water; the same thing happens to the clay soil, except it pushes upwards, lifting the foundation of your house with it.
Several factors can lead to this swelling of the soil:
- Excessive Rainfall: When there is a lot of rain, the soil around your home can become saturated with water. Clay soil absorbs this water and expands. If there are periods of heavy rain or your area experiences frequent storms, the ground can swell significantly, causing your foundation to heave.
- Poor Drainage: If the water around your home doesn’t drain properly, it can pool around the foundation. The clay soil then absorbs this standing water, causing it to expand. Poor drainage can result from various issues, such as clogged gutters, downspouts that don’t direct water away from your home, or landscaping that slopes towards your foundation instead of away from it.
- Plumbing Leaks: Leaky pipes can cause water to seep into the soil beneath your home. Over time, even small leaks can lead to significant soil expansion. This is especially problematic if the leaks go unnoticed for a long time because the soil will continuously absorb water and swell.
- Frost Heave: In colder climates, frost heave can occur when the ground freezes and thaws. This cycle can cause the soil to expand and contract, impacting the foundation.
If you live in an area with clay-rich soil, effectively managing the water around your home is crucial to preventing foundation problems.
Causes of Foundation Settlement
Foundation settlement, on the other hand, happens when the ground under a building’s foundation gets compressed or loses water, causing the foundation to sink. Imagine the soil like a sponge again– when it’s dry, it shrinks. Several things can cause this problem:
- Drought Conditions: When there is a long period without rain, the soil dries and shrinks. This shrinkage reduces the support under the foundation, causing it to settle or sink.
- Soil Compaction: Over time, the weight of the building and other structures can compress the soil beneath it. This compression makes the soil denser and causes the foundation to sink.
- Breakdown of Organic Materials: Soil often contains organic materials like leaves and roots. As these materials decompose, they break down and leave gaps in the soil. These gaps reduce the soil’s volume and strength, leading to the foundation settling.
When these factors are at play, the soil can’t support the foundation as well as it used to, leading to noticeable sinking and other structural issues in the building.
The symptoms of foundation settlement differ from those of heave. Foundation heave causes upward movement of the foundation, leading to cracks, bulging floors, and sticking doors. On the other hand, settlement results in a downward movement, causing vertical cracks, floors to sink, and gaps to appear at the top of walls.
Dealing with Foundation Heave
Taking action can prevent serious damage to your home from foundation heave. Here are some helpful steps:
Improving Drainage Systems
Ensuring your home has a sound drainage system is essential to stopping foundation heaving. Here’s what you need to do:
- Keep gutters and downspouts clean and working well: Regularly clean out leaves and debris from your gutters so water can flow through them quickly. Ensure downspouts are connected and direct water at least ten feet away from your house.
- Install French drains: These underground pipes help move water away from your home. They collect water from the ground and send it to a safe place that won’t affect your foundation.
- Grade your yard: Ensure the ground around your house slopes away from the foundation. This way, rainwater will flow away from your home instead of pooling around the base. You can use a shovel and some soil to adjust the slope if needed.
Soil Moisture Control
Keeping the soil around your house from swelling too much is essential to avoid foundation problems. You can do this by managing how much water the soil gets. Here are some ways to control soil moisture effectively:
- Watering Smartly (Irrigation Management): Ensure you’re watering your garden and lawn just the right amount. Too much water can swell the soil and push against your home’s foundation. Use a sprinkler system with timers and sensors to adjust the watering schedule based on the weather. During rainy periods, reduce the amount of watering to prevent the soil from getting too saturated.
- Installing Root Barriers: Plant roots, especially from large trees, can suck up a lot of water, causing the soil to dry out and shrink. Then, when it rains, the soil swells up again. To stop this from happening, you can put in root barriers. These barriers are placed around your house to keep tree roots from getting too close and affecting the soil moisture levels.
- Using Moisture Barriers: Moisture barriers are materials you place around the foundation of your house to stop water from getting into the soil. These can be plastic sheets or other waterproof materials that prevent rainwater from seeping into the ground right next to your foundation.
- Inspect and repair plumbing leaks promptly to prevent water from seeping into the soil.
Foundation Underpinning
If your house has a profound foundation heaving issue, consider underpinning it. Underpinning is like giving your house extra support by building more muscular legs underneath it. This process involves digging deeper, more stable soil layers and extending your foundation to that level. By doing this, you anchor your house to more solid ground, which helps keep it steady and prevents any further movement or shifting.
Regular Foundation Inspections
Imagine your home as a living being that needs regular check-ups to stay in good shape. Just like you see a doctor to catch any health issues early, having your home inspected regularly by a professional can help spot problems before they become serious.
During an inspection, professionals look for signs of trouble. Regular inspections can catch these issues early, allowing you to fix them before they become major, expensive repairs. So, consider it an investment in keeping your home safe for the long haul.
Engaging Professional Help
If you think your house might have foundation damage, it’s essential to call a professional foundation repair company. These experts know what to look for and can determine how bad the damage is. They’ll check everything out and then tell you the best way to fix it so you can implement the appropriate repair solutions. It is best to consult a foundation repair specialist for an accurate cost estimate.
Understanding the signs of foundation heave is key to protecting your home from significant damage. Improving drainage, managing soil moisture, or getting help from a pro can all make a big difference. By paying attention and taking action, you can reduce the impact of foundation heave and keep your home sturdy.
Do you think your foundation might be heaving? Contact us to book an evaluation. If there’s an issue, we’ll also give you a repair estimate. Since 1994, we’ve been helping people in Lincoln, Omaha, Kearney (Nebraska), Missouri, and Northeastern Kansas with foundation repair, basement waterproofing, crawl space encapsulation, and concrete leveling for their homes.
