Time and time again, you’ve seen us mention foundation problems in our weekly blog posts. But what are they really? And why should you care?
To understand how risky foundation issues are, you must first understand how important your foundation really is. Simply put, the foundation in your home is what’s holding it up, literally. It also plays a huge role in supporting the essential structural components of your house, like the load-bearing walls, main beams, floors and floor joists. Now, can you imagine if something this important fails?
Your foundation’s structural integrity can be affected by water, the original construction, as well as many other factors that will result in a variety of problems. And as the severity of these problems increases, so will the costs to remedy them. The upside is that you can reach out to a professional before these issues worsen, just like what this week’s featured client did. Let’s see how we helped them fortify their foundation!
Failing Foundation in McKinney TX
A homeowner in McKinney had started to notice that a bunch of doors near the front right corner of their home would open and close by themselves. Other times, they would stick so badly that the doors wouldn’t close at all. Then, sheetrock cracks had started to appear, as well as a large brick separation on the side of their house!
This sounds like something straight out of a horror movie, right? Well, even though their house is not haunted, the reasons behind these issues are just as terrifying. When they called our team, we discovered that their foundation had already started to fail.
Failing foundations have a ripple effect that you can see throughout a building. This is because when a foundation moves, the house moves along with it, resulting in cracks and misaligned doors that our client was experiencing.
Installing our PT2 System
To resolve their problems and prevent any more issues that would have seriously compromised the structure of their home, we needed to install our PT2 system. This cost-effective system utilizes concrete pressed pilings with rebar support that will prevent any displacement, ensuring the stability of our client’s foundations.
Most foundation repair projects will only require piers outside the home. But after taking elevation measurements across the slab, we discovered that the deflection was starting far back into the house. If we would only work on the perimeter, the affected secondary beam further inside the house would fail. The inside area of the home would then turn into a bowl, which is dangerous and scary!
To prevent that from happening, our team would have to install interior piers. This can be very messy, but tunneling under the house was not an option as this was too expensive. Instead, we worked inside the home, moving furniture out of the way and covering them with plastic. Despite the tight fit, we were able to install the piers with minimal disturbance and without damaging anything.
Even with the challenges we faced during the project, we were able to complete everything in only two days. The team even had enough time to spread some extra dirt around some low spots the homeowner had near the city drain!
Failing foundations are costly and terrifying. Leaving them unaddressed will only lead to bigger problems and bigger costs. Don’t wait for things to get worse. Call or text us at 214-326-0718 and we’ll work our magic on your home.
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