3 Reasons Your Home is Sinking

If your house feels like it’s sinking - or slanting, sloping, settling, any of those S words that you might use to describe it - it can be overwhelming to think about the cause of the problem, let alone the solution.

 

The good news is that the root cause of a sinking home is usually one of three things, and they’re all treatable. The bad news is that you absolutely can’t ignore it and hope that it will go away, because it won’t - in fact, it’ll only get worse.

 

Let’s break down what may be happening under your home.

 

1. Rotting joists

 

If you’ve noticed localized soft spots in your floors - we often hear the word “spongy” when customers describe the problem - the issue may lie with the joists below the subfloor. When a basement or crawl space has water problems, the ambient moisture (humidity) in the air can warp the wooden support beams. Over time, this can lead to structural failure of the beams as the weight of the house proves too much in their weakened state, and they begin to crack and crumble.

 

The key here is to reinforce the failing beams and increase the support for the home above them. We can sister new wooden or steel beams to the existing structure to reinforce the joists, and then support them with SmartJacks.

 

 

2. Bowing walls

 

If your foundation walls have cracks or are visibly out of alignment, you could be dealing with a bowing wall issue. Pressure from surrounding soil (like in the case of oversaturation in a heavy rainstorm) causes walls to bow inward, which can destabilize the side of the house above the affected wall. Upstairs, this can cause problems like sticking doors and windows due to everything going off kilter.

 

We have a variety of wall stabilization options and can tailor a solution to fix your home’s problems. PowerBraces are steel beams attached at the top and bottom of the wall, and GeoLock wall anchors are secured in stable soil outside the home. Both provide immediate protection against further bowing, and can be tightened over time to hopefully straighten the walls. Carbon Armor straps are stronger than steel and are great for walls where a low profile solution is necessary.

 

3. Settling slab

 

The root cause of the sinking, uneven feeling is a settling slab. Soil can wash out or otherwise shift below the slab at the base of a foundation, leaving it unsupported. The void below and the massive weight above lead the slab to shift, crack, or otherwise settle. This can result in the aforementioned sticking doors and windows, gaps between baseboards and floors, and a number of other problems that will only get worse over time. It seems like a problem almost impossible to solve.

 

But it isn’t! We can design a piering system that transfers the weight of the sinking slab to helical or push piers, which are anchored at a depth able to withstand the weight of the home. By taking the unstable soil out of the equation, there’s no further worry of sinking.

 

Foundation problems can be scary, but solving them is as easy as calling us. Schedule your free inspection today and let us design a system to make your home safe, stable, and secure.