Wall Anchors 101
Bowing walls are one of the more frightening problems our customers call about. It’s disturbing to go into your basement and see a wall cracking and leaning - especially a wall that supports the weight of your home. With the threat of wall failure looming, bowing walls are something we need to fix sooner than later.
Luckily, we offer many products that will stabilize and secure walls. Today we’re going to talk about Geo-Lock Wall Anchors, one of the less intuitive products that packs a big punch.
I say less intuitive because our other major wall solution, the PowerBrace, seems a lot more obvious. A steel beam that you affix to the footer and joist that stabilizes the wall just makes sense. But the wall anchor is a little more complicated.
I admit that it took me a while after working here to really understand how wall anchors worked. No matter how many people drew me pictures or how many explanations I read, it just didn’t make sense - you drill a hole through the dirt and attach a plate and that stabilizes it? Even though the shifting of that very same soil is contributing to the wall’s bowing in the first place?
Luckily, a few years back a very kind engineer from Supportworks literally got into a model display with me in Omaha and showed me how it works. So now I can explain it to you in case you’re in the same confused boat that I was.
The Geo-Lock Wall Anchor system consists of three parts: the interior anchor plate, the steel cable, and the exterior anchor plate. A steel cable is drilled through the wall and through the soil to a predetermined distance where the soil is solid and secure. A large plate is affixed to the foundation wall inside, and outside, we carve out a section of soil to attach a smaller plate to the other end of the cable. By anchoring the cable in stable soil, we can, over time, continue to tighten the anchor inside and hopefully even straighten the bowing wall.
Cracking, bowing, and leaning walls are scary, but they don’t have to be permanent. Call us to talk about Geo-Lock wall anchors and other solutions for your bowing walls.
