Causes of Sloping Floors

Maybe you’ve noticed a gentle *squish* to the floor as you walk through the kitchen. Maybe it’s a desk chair that just won’t stop rolling toward the door. Or maybe it’s the sudden visibility of an inch of wall between the baseboard and the floor in your living room. 

Something is wrong with your floors, right? 

Maybe, but the problem could be much worse. Here are a few potential causes of floor problems, and what they mean for your home. 

Crawl Space Moisture 

If your crawl space has moisture problems (either standing water or excessive ambient moisture), there’s a good chance that the beams and boards that make up your home’s subfloor are damaged and causing the floors to sink. Mold and water can lead to wood rot, and if you’ve ever kicked a wet tree stump and watched it fall apart, you have a good mental image of what’s happening down there. 

Even without water, struggling crawl space support posts can put pressure on support beams and cause them to fail. A compromised subfloor leads to that squishy feeling when you walk through your home. 

Soil Movement 

Settlement and heaving of soil can cause a world of foundation issues. Settlement occurs when soil shrinks (e.g. dries out) while heaving is caused by expansion. Heave occurs more in clay-based soils, so settling is more common in our area and is what we’ll be focusing on here. 

As soil shifts and settles, it can create a void under your home’s slab. Depending on the size and scope of the void, the slab will settle or maybe even break at the pressure point created by the void. As the foundation settles, the house settles with it, leading to sloping floors. 

Bowing Walls 

Anything from soil movement to just a poorly constructed foundation can cause bowing walls, and they present a number of problems for your home. One of those problems is uneven and unstable floors. As a wall bows, the floor above the wall can sink to meet it, which causes sloping, or stay in place for the time being, which creates a springboard feel - think of those times you’ve taken a step and felt a ‘pop’ under your foot. 

Solutions 

So what can you do? Sagging, sloping, sinking, and settling floors are, at best, an inconvenience; at worst, they’re dangerous and a sign something is wrong with your home. You want the dangerous problems resolved, of course, but you should also rid yourself of inconveniences. You spend a lot of your leisure time in your home, but how relaxing is it when that sloping floor is poking at the back of your mind? 

Ayers has a variety of products to fix the causes of your floor issues. From CleanSpace vapor barrier and the SaniDry dehumidifier to dry out your crawl space, to SmartJacks that reinforce the supports, to a variety of wall anchors, braces, and piering products that stabilize the foundation and protect against soil shifting, we have a solution for everything. Call us to schedule your free inspection and stop wondering what lies beneath your floor problems.