How Can Moisture Affect Your Foundation?

Moisture is perhaps the most destructive cause of damage that your foundation will face. Snow in the winter followed by plenty of rainy days in the spring certainly can cause the soil around your home to absorb a lot more water than it is actually capable of holding. This then can result in this soil gaining excess water weight and later pressing up against your foundation. This pressure (referred to as hydrostatic pressure) can grow heavy enough to cause the foundation to shift out of its original placement or crack into pieces altogether. Hydrostatic pressure can also take on another form as well. Water can seep through to the foundation’s pores and become trapped. These trapped droplets then may freeze over in the wintertime, and the expanding ice can cause the foundation to crack from within.

The clay bowl effect is another form of moisture damage that you will have to watch out for. Basically, contractors will dig a hole in the area where they plan to build a new home. They then will install a foundation and either a basement or crawl space. After each component is set, there will typically be some space left around them that the contractor then will backfill in with the soil they initially dug up.Of course, this makes the soil much looser than it once was, leaving it prone to washing out during a heavy storm and leaving your foundation without the adequate support it needs. Your foundation then may begin to settle and crack as a result. Lee’s Summit also has silty clay soils, which complicates matters. While silt is easy for storms to wash away, clay is compact and tends to absorb more moisture and inadvertently lead to a rise in hydrostatic pressure.