Have you noticed cracks opening up in your concrete floors? Are windows that used to open and close easily suddenly sticking or unable to completely close? Have some doors begun to jam or fail to latch? It’s possible that you are experiencing some sinking in the concrete foundation of your home in the Ottawa area.
Drought and heat are only a few of the outside elements that might be causing your concrete foundation to sink. Foundation settlement can lead to major structural problems, but fortunately there are ways to resolve these issues without completely tearing out your foundation and starting over. During dry spells, trees and shrubs start grabbing all the water from the ground that they can. This can lead to problems specifically in areas around Ottawa where homes rest on soil that expands and contracts a great deal depending on the moisture levels. Even settling of a concrete foundation causes minimal to no damage, but environmental factors such as moisture levels, landscaping and sunlight ensure that soil is rarely homogenous around a home resulting in uneven settlement.
Plumbing and displaced soil can create a void under a concrete slab when plumbing lines are installed below concrete slabs. Sometimes concrete slabs can leak, resulting in uneven leakage of soil from under the slab that can cause a void where the concrete can crack and settle. Puddles and other signs of moisture in a crawl space may indicate poor drainage around the perimeter foundation. Concrete slabs can support a tremendous amount of weight, but only when the supporting soil below them is evenly supporting the concrete itself.
If you’re not familiar with a building site, you might be surprised to learn that the soil underneath your concrete slab is unlikely to be solid. It could well be a combination of trash leftover from the building site, rocks and fill soil with various levels of compaction. Sometimes as a home settles the fill soil underneath the concrete slab can shift out unevenly, causing footings to move as the fill soil consolidates beneath the weight of the slab. The slab can then begin to crack as it settles into the void left by the fill soil.
While a shifting concrete foundation sounds scary, working with a licensed local professional basement and foundation professional like City Residential Foundation Repair can offer peace of mind and options much less invasive than breaking up the concrete slab under your home and starting over.
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