Foundation And Slab Repair in Ames, Des Moines, Waterloo

How heaving foundations & slabs lead to damage of your Home

Foundation upheaval can lift an entire structure, but more often it forces parts of a foundation or slab upwards, while other sections remain stationary.

Either way, the damage that results will require the expertise of a foundation repair specialist

The Problem:

Your foundation or slab floor is moving upwards, leading to cracks in the walls and floors of your home.

Telltale Signs:

• Cracking on inside walls (common)
• Cracking on outside walls (rare)
• Cracks on the concrete floor slab
• Displaced or tilting slab sections
• Cracks joining together to form a triangle

Other causes for heaving include tree roots and pressure from adjacent buildings. Regardless of the cause, a professional foundation contractor is the best person to evaluate foundation heaving problems and suggest suitable solutions for your home.

What Causes Foundation Upheaval?

Heave is the upward movement of a foundation or slab caused by underlying soils that expand or swell. This occurs due to an increase in moisture or by freezing forces. Heave is more common with slabs than foundations because slabs have less weight to resist heaving forces. Unless there is a long period of drought, heave most commonly occurs within the first few years of the building's construction.

Slab and foundation heave are most commonly caused by these four forces:

Expansive Soils

A house built on soils with high clay content will be susceptible to heaving forces because clay-rich soil expands significantly when it gets wet.

The excavation for a foundation often gives the soil around and under a house a chance to dry out and shrink, as shown in the photo at right. After the house is built, clay-rich soil that gets soaked during wet spells can cause heaving problems, while also damaging foundation walls.

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Frost Heave

Water increases in volume by nearly 10% when it freezes, and wet soil can expand even more when frozen. When wet soil freezes the resulting pressure can cause the slab or foundation wall to shift and crack.

The colder the temperature, the deeper the soil will freeze. Frost forces can lift a foundation dramatically - sometimes by several inches - leading to serious heave damage.

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Plumbing Leaks

Leaks or breaks in plumbing lines that run underneath a concrete slab or through a foundation wall can deposit moisture underneath the foundation and slab. This moisture can be from supply lines, waste lines, or even your home's HVAC system.

Over time, this moisture can cause the soils underneath the foundation to expand, which will then cause them to push up on the structure above.

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Prolonged Or Heavy Precipitation

Too much precipitation combined with too little drainage away from the house will lead to increased moisture underneath your foundation. Moisture that comes into contact with expansive soil can result in heaving of your foundation and slabs.

Precipitation can also cause expansion in the soils on the sides of your foundation, leading to bowing, buckling walls.

We Do Foundation Heave Repair in IA!

At Midwest Foundation Repair, we have the tools and training available to fix foundations and slabs that are experiencing problems with upheaval.

We offer foundation and slab heave repair quotes to all within our Iowa service area. If you would like to schedule a free, no-obligation appointment with one of our foundation specialists, call or e-mail us today!

We proudly serve Waterloo, Ames, Des Moines, surrounding areas such as Ankeny, Urbandale, West Des Moines, Marshalltown, Ottumwa, Fort Dodge, Cedar Falls, and nearby.

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