Why House Leveling Makes Your Home Safer
You might need house leveling if you have you noticed sloping or sagging floors in your home.
House leveling is the process of lifting a home’s foundation to as close to its original state as possible. This is typically done during foundation repair.
Most often, house leveling is needed when the foundation has started to erode. Structural issues can occur when the foundation has settled at an uneven rate, poor soil conditions, under-slab plumbing leaks, poor exterior drainage, and even intrusive tree roots.
Before the home is leveled, these issues need to be corrected to prevent the home from sinking again in the future.
What is foundation settling?
Home foundations “settle” or sink typically because of issues with water intrusion and/or the soil the foundation sits on. When there’s drainage issues near the soil, this can create a force that causes the foundation to move, which can lead to walls cracking and floors sloping. When plumbing leaks occur, this can cause the soil to become over-saturated.
Sometimes water isn’t the issue and just the soil is. Homes that were constructed on expansive clay soil often suffer from foundation settlement because the clay soil expands when wet which pushes the foundation upward, and shrinks when it dries which moves everything downward.
Types of House Leveling:
Slab foundation homes can be leveled using a few different repair methods. These foundation repairs can be done by excavating the exterior of the home and installing pilings or piers, steel piers, concrete pilings, mudjacking or other chemical sources to fill the gaps in the foundation, thus bringing the foundation to a more even and level position.
In homes that have a crawl space, the house can be leveled by installing pilings underneath the home’s piers to strengthen them, using additional hardware like rods or braces to reinforce the damaged areas of the crawl space and level the sagging floors, stabilizing the soil underneath the foundation, or a combination of the various methods listed.
If you think your home is in need of house leveling, contact Julian Construction today and we will send one of our foundation specialists out to conduct a free, thorough inspection with a quote for repair.