One of the mistakes builders or homeowners may make is failing to protect the essential part of the house, which is the foundation. With a good foundation, you are assured of safety, and the house can serve your needs longer. This explains why good builders take their time to study the soil around the house to determine how to create a lasting house foundation. If some of these protocols are surpassed, you need repair services to ensure your foundation is up to code and serves as an ideal safety measure.
A good foundation should consist of various elements like a drainage system, insulation, waterproofing essentials, and backfills. All these can be used simultaneously, or the teams can select the best one based on the current condition and environmental threats.
Therefore, if you notice any issues like cracks or wet basement floors and walls, seek expert opinion on the foundation, integrity, and contribution to your current predicament. Based on their assessment, here are some elements you should expect to protect the house and the foundation.
Waterproofing Essentials
There are so many houses that collapse annually due to the threat of fluids leaking into the house from the outside. Once you notice some rot in the basement or certain areas constantly being wet, even in the dry season, you could be leaking. Most of these leaks occur because the basement and the house foundation lack the proper waterproofing capabilities to keep all the ground fluids out of the house.
Such problems arise whenever people ignore future concerns and assume that since the area is relatively hot, with no floods and limited rains, there will be no leaks into the house. Whether you live in dry areas of Philadelphia, foundation exterior waterproofing is a must-have for the house to ensure future safety and that the property can last longer.
If your house is compromised due to a lack of such capabilities, you need the experts to help with the repairs. Such repairs may entail a lot of activities like digging around the found form outside and waterproofing it.
Eventually, you are guaranteed safety and property longevity once all the waterproofing repairs and features are fixed. Some of the waterproofing features used for the house include the installation of a waterproofing membrane throughout the foundation to keep all the fluids out. With the waterproofing features, the foundation will hardly get cracked or structurally compromised due to pressure and fluids.
Foundation Drainage System
Having a dry foundation should be essential, especially when you live in areas prone to minimum and frequent floods. The role of drainage in the basement is to collect all the sipping fluids and redirect the water away from the house. Therefore, you need a system that works efficiently and effectively to constantly redirect all the fluids from the basement to ensure the foundation is constantly dry.
With all the foundation water redirected away from the house, you prevent foundation cracks, weaker structural integrity, mold, and other conditions that weaken the basement. The foundation drainage system is complex and should involve multiple systems to keep all the fluids away from the foundation. These systems include gutters, French drains, downspouts, and grading.
The drainage system must be complex in areas likely to have softer grounds due to more ground fluids. As a cautionary measure, the building teams will always build the foundation above the water table or proof the surface below to prevent the damage and fluids from sipping upwards.
Foundation Insulation
One of the greatest threats to your house foundation is moisture accumulation, constantly leading to more fluids building up on the ground, eventually leading to cracks and water build-up. Before the moisture builds up, ensure most of it is drained away from the foundation, thereby reducing the threats of these fluids.
With a lot of moisture in the foundation, the temperature and air quality in the house will be compromised. Eventually, the house foundation will be weaker and risky to live in. Moisture accumulation could also be a major issue, leading to termites building up, eating wood, and building on the walls.
Part of the insulation includes crawl space ventilation, which allows the air passage to remove excessive humidity from the house. You can consider using the most porous elements within the foundation system, allowing free air exchange and fluid elimination from the basement.
Foundation Granular Backfills
Fluid accumulation is not the only threat to the house foundation; there are more factors and threats. One of these threats is hydrostatic pressure, which can facilitate the fluids’ sipping through the foundation. Therefore, when building the house, your role is to ensure the pressure is significantly reduced to reduce their impact on fluid movement into the house and through the foundation.
To reduce the pressure, you must fill areas around the foundation with gravel, crushed stones, and other elements. These elements create an area for the pressure to act on, reducing its impact on the foundation. Otherwise, the pressure on the foundation could shutter the house, leading to multiple cracks and other complications. Once the areas around the house are filled with granular backfills, water flow can also be redirected to the flood and foundation drains, preventing accumulation at the foundation.
Bottomline
The foundation elements to consider will depend on factors like the areas you live in and building codes. Suppose some of these factors are ignored during construction. The repair teams will advise on various options, including waterproofing, insulation, drainage, and backfill elements to avoid cracks and dumpy foundations. For extra precaution, you can use all of them.