Basement, Crawl Space, & Foundation Repair In Greenfield, IN

When your home sustains foundation damage, which is typically caused by unstable underlying soil, it often shows up throughout your home in many ways. These issues can co-occur with and lead to other types of home damage, such as in your basement or crawl space.

If you notice any of these signs, it’s important to have your home professionally inspected and repaired right away.

• Basement wall cracks
• Inward basement wall bowing
• Drywall cracks
• Drywall nail pops
• Sagging, uneven floors
• Floor and wall gaps
• Sticking windows and doors
• Exterior brick cracks
• Leaning chimney

Bowing walls can be recognized by spreading cracks, cosmetic damage, and visible unevenness in the surface of the walls themselves. This issue can be caused by a number of different factors, but the most common and likely are issues with a property’s foundation and issues in the soil.  

Foundation Problems 

Your property’s foundation is hugely important to its entire structure. Any damage to your foundation, no matter how slight, can cause serious issues throughout the structure, health, and safety of your home. As such, bowing walls are just one example of secondary damage which can occur as a result of foundational issues.  

The most common foundational problems are subsidence and settlement. Both issues include sinking of some kind, either widespread (the entire home) or localized (just one portion of your home). Subsidence, for example, is a process by which the whole property, or a large portion of it, sinks into the ground while settlement is a process which causes chunks of a foundation to break away and sink into voids beneath the property. Either way, the main issue tends to be in the soil.  

Soil Problems 

Most of the main structural issues in a property tend to be caused by problem soil in some way or another. Expansive soils, for example, contract and expand depending on their water content. Settlement is most often caused by dehydration of expansive soil, but can also be caused by soil washout and erosion.  

Bowing walls, however, can also be caused by excessive soil saturation and the hydrostatic pressure which this can cause. The weight and pressure exerted by very wet soil, especially expansive soil, can overwhelm any wall over time, especially if it is made of poured concrete which has very low tensile strength in comparison to its compressive strength.  

The damage that a loose crawl space vent does is usually indirect – the mere presence of a loose door or vent cover will not cause damage, but it allows damaging conditions to form within your crawl space and impact your home as a whole. 

Crawl Space Damage 

The most immediate effects of a loose or damaged crawl space vent cover or door are the recurrence of the stack effect and an increase in humidity. Dampness is sure to follow and if the issue is prolonged, your crawl space can suffer many problems. From wood rot and deteriorating insulation to damaged or rotting insulation and pest infestation, the issues that this can cause are diverse and incredibly damaging. 

The main problem, is that these issues will not only make your crawl spaces’ internal climate unhealthy and unpleasant but that they will start to damage the structure of your home, warping floorboards and rotting joists. When this happens, the damage in your crawl space will start to spill over into your property as a whole. This can impact everything from your property’s structure but also your health and well-being. 

Whole Property Issues 

The environment in your crawl space and home as a whole are intimately connected. When mold and mildew form in your crawl space or the joists succumb to wood rot, the consequences will be felt throughout your home. Mold can spread at an alarming rate, after all, and will ruin your soft furnishings as well as create a serious smell. This odor can be incredibly difficult to shift without professional intervention. 

Wood rot, by contrast, can start to impact your property’s structure – the first area to be impacted, of course, will be your floors. Damaged joists will cause the flooring to start sagging, pulling away from the walls, and even collapse if they are left without support for a long period. This can, in turn, cause damage to walls that are attached to the flooring. This is a costly issue to fix, as you can no doubt imagine, so it is better to avoid damage where possible. 

Seeing cracking and sinking concrete slabs on your property and around town is common. So common, in fact, that you might not think twice about the consequences of these problems or the need for repair.

However, sunken concrete impacts your home in many ways. Not only do they make your home look bad, but they are safety hazards. Slabs that have sunken and are uneven are tripping hazards for anyone walking or driving over them.

If the sinking concrete in question is part of your basement or slab floor, it also presents foundation concerns. Foundation damage also threatens the safety of your home and loved ones, so having these uneven slabs professionally inspected and repaired is crucial.