Base­ment Foun­da­tion Cracks: Trou­ble for Home­own­ers in Glen­coe IL 60022

May 6, 2014 • By Matthew Stock.

Glen­coe IL is a small, afflu­ent vil­lage on Chicago’s North Shore. It has a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 8700 and occu­pies slight­ly less than 4 square miles of lake­front real estate.

The ori­gin of the village’s name is not 100% clear but most attribute it to the vil­lage of the same name in the Scot­tish High­lands. Giv­en the Scots’ propen­si­ty for and inven­tion of the game of golf it is per­haps appro­pri­ate that the Illi­nois vil­lage of Glen­coe is sur­round­ed by golf cours­es, includ­ing the Lake Shore Coun­try Club, Glen­coe Golf Club and the Skok­ie Coun­try Club.

Not all of Glencoe’s open space is devot­ed to golf, how­ev­er. A Cook Coun­ty For­est Pre­serve con­tains both the Skok­ie Lagoons and a sec­tion of the North Branch Bicy­cle Trail. The Chica­go Botan­ic Gar­den, a 385-acre liv­ing plant muse­um, is also locat­ed in Glencoe.

Of course, the rest of Glen­coe is home to 2500 fam­i­lies and oth­ers who live in more than 3200 homes, half of which are more than 50 years old. Like home­own­ers every­where and espe­cial­ly those with old­er homes, Glen­coe home­own­ers often dis­cov­er base­ment foun­da­tion cracks and need to be able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the ones that may just allow water seep­age and those that threat­en the foun­da­tion itself.

Base­ment Foun­da­tion Cracks in Glen­coe Homes

Most foun­da­tions found in Glen­coe are con­struct­ed of poured con­crete but some, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the village’s old­er homes, may be built of masonry. 

In a poured con­crete foun­da­tion, cracks can be nar­row and appear to be with­out a dis­cernible pat­tern. They can also be wide (more than 1/8”) and show up in a pat­tern that typ­i­cal­ly includes a ver­ti­cal crack in the mid­dle of the wall and two angled cracks across the upper cor­ners. Invis­i­ble from inside are two more ver­ti­cal cracks where the dam­aged wall sep­a­rates from the adja­cent walls.

The nar­row cracks are usu­al­ly non-struc­tur­al but will allow ground water to seep into the base­ment. The wider cracks that fol­low the described pat­tern usu­al­ly indi­cate struc­tur­al dam­age caused by set­tle­ment or lat­er­al pres­sure from over-sat­u­rat­ed soil that has caused the wall to move inward, either rotat­ing from the bot­tom (poured con­crete) or bow­ing or bulging in the mid­dle (mason­ry.)

In a mason­ry foun­da­tion, cracks devel­op in the mor­tar joints between mason­ry units. Minor cracks can allow water to seep into the base­ment and wider cracks indi­cate struc­tur­al dam­age to the wall. Cracks in mor­tar joints will appear most­ly in a stair-step pat­tern but will usu­al­ly have a wide hor­i­zon­tal crack when the wall has been desta­bi­lized, accom­pa­nied by angled cracks from the corners.

Nar­row cracks in poured con­crete that are seep­ing water can be per­ma­nent­ly repaired by inject­ing them with expand­ing polyurethane, which expands to fill and seal the crack all the way to the out­side soil and remains flex­i­ble when it cures to pre­vent the crack from re-open­ing due to minor foun­da­tion movement.

Cracked mason­ry walls are best repaired by apply­ing an exte­ri­or water­proof­ing mem­brane but the seep­age can be man­aged with inte­ri­or drain tile and a vapor bar­ri­er applied to the wall inside the basement.

Wall move­ment can be repaired with car­bon fiber strips that are epox­ied to the wall but only if the wall has moved less than 2 inch­es inward. If the wall has moved far­ther, it will require the instal­la­tion of low-pro­file steel chan­nels anchored to the foot­ing and bolt­ed to floor joists at the top to sta­bi­lize the wall and pre­vent fur­ther rotation.

Regard­less of the size of loca­tion of a base­ment foun­da­tion crack, a Glen­coe home­own­er that finds one or more in his or her base­ment will need the help of a foun­da­tion repair pro­fes­sion­al to fix it prop­er­ly. At U.S. Water­proof­ing, our struc­tur­al foun­da­tion team uses engi­neer­ing data to plan and imple­ment per­ma­nent struc­tur­al repairs and our base­ment water­proof­ing experts employ the lat­est of mate­ri­als and tech­nol­o­gy to keep base­ments dry. We’ve been doing this since our found­ing in 1957 so please ask for our free advice when you see a crack in your basement.

For more infor­ma­tion about Glen­coe base­ment foun­da­tion cracks, please post ques­tions in the Com­ments box below.

Tags: basement foundation cracks glencoe, glencoe basement foundation cracks, cook county basement waterproofing

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