Columbia, MO

Your foundation is one of the most important parts of your home. When it gets damaged, it can affect your entire property at an alarming speed. A damaged foundation also can lead to bowing walls, cracks, and even sticking windows and doors. Foundation problems do not resolve themselves–they just get worse with time. 

Settlement Can Affect Your Entire House 

In addition to cracks in the foundation that let water inside your home, foundation settlement can cause more widespread damage with time. First, it can cause issues with dampness and humidity, allowing water to seep into your home. 

As foundation cracks become more severe, they destabilize your foundation, leading to additional problems like sagging floors and bowing walls. 

The Damage Gets Worse the Longer It’s Left Alone 

Any issue with your foundation is only likely to continue and get worse with time. Foundation issues do not rectify themselves, unlike other problems which may resolve themselves over time. In fact, foundation issues usually grow at an impressive rate. 

If your house has foundation issues, then it will never get easier or cheaper for you to deal with them. Unless your foundation is damaged by an unusual event, such as a powerful earthquake, the cause is likely to be in the soil under your structure. Weak and expansive soils do not stop affecting your foundation once the damage sets in. In reality, they have a more pronounced effect on the weak foundation. 

The presence of water at any time in your St. Louis, MO, crawl space has the potential to cause damage, but persistent dampness and water pools in your crawl space are a sign of ongoing and serious issues in your home. 

Seepage, Groundwater, and Open Vents 

If your crawl space is persistently damp and commonly has pooling or standing water in it, there is a good chance that it is in some way vulnerable or exposed and that this is the source of the water (rather than damage of some kind). The most likely sources of moisture that are not connected to damage of some kind are an exposed crawl space floor, a process known as seepage, and open crawl space vents. 

Seepage and the saturation of a dirt floor in a crawl space are processes that hinge largely on the porous nature of concrete. When the soil around and under your home is saturated, the concrete foundation and foundation walls may start to absorb water, slowly letting it pass through them and into your property. This will cause minor dampness at first but can lead to significant amounts of water over time. Open crawl space vents, by contrast, can let water pass directly during periods of intense rainfall, heavy snowmelt, or localized flooding. Likewise, they can cause increased humidity and condensation as a result of the impact of the stack effect. 

Internal and Structural Damage 

If the amount of water in your home is significant, it is more likely that the underlying source is some form of damage to your property’s structure or plumbing system. A crack, leak, or rupture somewhere in a property’s plumbing system will be the most obvious and serious source of water—a full-size plumbing flood can cause copious amounts of water to enter a crawl space in a very short period of time. It is far more likely that a low-level leak will be to blame for small amounts of standing water or persistently high humidity. 

Structural damage like cracking and fragmentation in a property’s foundation or foundation walls can also be responsible for small amounts of water and high humidity in a home. This generally happens because of water’s incredible ability to find even the smallest channel in which to travel. Even a hairline crack can allow water in your home and, over time, the passage of water through small cracks can contribute to their growth and spread. 

Water can make its way into your home through a variety of different passages. When you’re not sure where that water’s coming from, it can feel like an impossible challenge to try and get the flow of it back under control. 

Luckily, the professional contractors in your area have a myriad of waterproofing measures ready to make available to you. Interior drainage systems are among the best basement waterproofing measures you can invest in. These systems run the perimeter of your basement and actively catch and redirect water away from the parts of your basement that may be sensitive to damage.  

 There are other home waterproofing measures available to you, though. Why might you want to consider installing some manner of basement drainage system above your other available solutions? 

Types of Basement Drainage Systems 

There are several different types of drainage systems available to you, should you want to consider installing one. These can include: 

• Interior drainage systems 
• Exterior drainage systems  
• Sump pumps 

Interior and exterior drainage systems rely on a series of pipes to capture water and direct it back out of your home again. The lack of power needed to use one of these drains can make it appealing, especially if you’re only contending with minor flooding throughout your space. On the other hand, sump pumps can prove to be the ideal drainage system aids should you find yourself contending with heavy but concentrated flooding. 

Choosing which of these available home drainage systems to work with can be a challenge. There are distinct differences, of course, between their capabilities. More often than not, you can determine which of these drains may suit your best with help from an area professional. Together, you can walk through your home and determine what, if any, kind of damage your basement has seen over the past several months. After discussing repairs, you can then determine whether or not you need widespread protection in the form of an interior drainage system or concentrated care in the form of a sump pump. If it seems like there are pockets of groundwater causing you problems outside of your home, comparatively, an exterior drainage system may better suit your property. 

Doubling Down on Home Solutions 

The good news is that should you find yourself contending with widespread basement damage, be it in the form of flooding or seepage, you can work with area professionals to invest in both repairs and basement waterproofing measures. Repairs will, of course, need to come first so that you can prevent additional damage from wreaking havoc on your home. If you try to install any drainage system without first investing in home repairs, you’ll find that the conditions around your home will worsen and your drainage system will have a much shorter lifespan than it would have in a sealed home. 

That said, there’s no need to confine yourself to a single type of drainage system. You can have your interior drainage system work in tandem with additional waterproofing measures if you are concerned about the amount of water getting into your home. Vapor barriers, for example, can prevent any water that might slip away from your drainage system from getting into your home. Dehumidifiers, comparatively, can help you manage the moisture levels in your home. If you think you may need these additional waterproofing measures in your home, you can discuss which might pair best with an exterior drain tile system when area professionals come to inspect your home. 

Concrete settling occurs when the soil underneath the concrete can no longer hold up the structure. In Kansas City, this happens due to shrinking and swelling. The Marshall soil of the region contains clay, causing the soil to expand when exposed to water. When that moisture dries up, the soil shrinks and compacts together. However, the soil is no longer the same size it was before: the soil has shrunk in size so much that it lost a significant amount of volume, so there is now a gap between the concrete and the soil.

Because there is now a void left, the concrete settles against the soil layer, which now rests lower than it did before. Concrete settling is most likely to occur in areas of the house that get exposed to an excess amount of water, such as your pool deck or driveway. Rainwater and melting snow seep through the concrete and saturate the soil, causing it to expand. This shrink-swell process that soil goes through takes place over a few years, so it’s up to you to spot the problem signs early to avoid excessive settling.

There isn’t much that can be done to prevent concrete settling besides just getting repairs done when the slab does start sinking. Replacing the soil won’t yield many results because sandy soils wash out when exposed to water. The best you can do is protect your slab and soil from excessive moisture by keeping snow away from it during the winter and improving your yard drainage.