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Foundation Repair and Texas Soil
Soils vary from city to city – Call the experts who have seen and fixed it all!
Owning a home or commercial building is the biggest investment you’ll ever make. You hope that the structure will stand the test of time, but unfortunately, that’s not always the case. More often than not, you’ll eventually run into foundation problems, which can run the gamut and differ from house to house and city to city. How and why does this happen?
Foundation settling and shifting can be caused by building a structure on expanding or contracting soil, improperly compacted fill soils, or from poor or erroneous maintenance of the earth around the foundation. Expansive soils, in particular, are everywhere in North Texas and essentially acts as a sponge (dry out and shrink during the summer and absorb water and swell in the winter and spring). As the soil under the house shrinks and swells, the house and foundation will move up and down. As long as the foundation movement is not great enough to damage the house or foundation, or cause cosmetic damage, most people don’t see it as a foundation repair problem. But most of the time, they are not so lucky. Below are just a few of the warning signs you should be wary of:
- Doors not opening properly
- Cracks in sheetrock
- Cracks in concrete slab floors
- Gaps beside window frames
- Exterior cracks
SLAB FOUNDATION REPAIR
A slab foundation is a flat, thick layer of concrete upon which a home or commercial business is built. They are generally poured on the ground and do not have basements or crawl spaces in Texas. Slab foundations have grade beam around the perimeter of the slab, and will have grade beams throughout the interior of the slab. Depending on the size and age of home. Settlement of any kind can destroy the integrity of concrete slab foundation and lead to major problems with the structural integrity of the property. Naturally, the longer the problem exists, the more expensive foundation repairs and cosmetic damages will cost to repair. There are a number of ways to repair a slab foundation in Texas, but the most popular are concrete pressed piers and steel piers. Both have been used for decades and are an effective tool for structural support.
CONCRETE PRESSED PIERS – Concrete Pressed Piers are more commonly used for foundation repair because of their advantages over other methods, including drilled piers, poured footings, and mud jacking. Benefits of pressed piers include shorter installation periods and deeper pier depth. They are also less abrasive to your landscape than drilled piers or poured footings.
STEEL PIERS – Steel piers can be pushed 75 feet into the soil, which provides fantastic support to foundations everywhere since they can support more weight and cannot be affected by soil movement like other types of foundation piers. It is critical that steel piers be installed so they reach a depth where they reach bedrock.
RS Foundations uses either concrete pressed piers or steel pressed piers to stabilize the foundation of your home or business. We install the piers to refusal and level the structure to the allowable tolerances. Our knowledgeable consultant can determine which pier is right for your home and walk you through the process.
DRILLED PIERS – Pressed piers are driven through the existing problematic soils around and under the slab until the frictional buildup is so great that the structure is lifted and supported. Typically, drilled piers are only 12-15 feet in depth and poured footers even less. This depth could be too shallow for the existing soils around and under the foundation. The way to ensure the Lifetime Warranty is to drive piers past the active zone of movement in your soil. Pressed Concrete and Pressed Steel Piers are designed to do just that.
