How to Fix Struc­tur­al Foun­da­tion Dam­age with Hydraulic Push Piers

Feb 28, 2013 • By Matthew Stock with Barry Schilling.

You’ve begun to notice things, things around the house that just don’t seem right. Win­dows stick when you try to open or close them. Doors are jammed shut or won’t close at all. Cracks in the dry­wall are radi­at­ing from the cor­ners of win­dows and doors.

You ven­ture into the base­ment and see more cracks, this time in the con­crete walls. You look up and see that the steel I‑beam that runs down the mid­dle of the house looks like it has dropped at the end. You check with a carpenter’s lev­el from your tool­box and see that the floor isn’t lev­el any more.

Uh-oh. Your foun­da­tion has dropped and one end of your house is no longer lev­el and that’s caus­ing struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age. Obvi­ous­ly, some­thing needs to be done – but what?

Hydraulic Push Piers – the Best Way to Raise and Sta­bi­lize a Foundation

The dam­age to your foun­da­tion has been caused by des­ic­cat­ed soil that has essen­tial­ly shrunk below it; here’s a more detailed descrip­tion of how that occurred.

In order to repair the dam­age, the foun­da­tion, and the home above, must be raised back to lev­el and per­ma­nent­ly sup­port­ed in a way that pre­vents fur­ther sink­ing or set­tling. The best way to accom­plish this is by installing hydraulic push piers. This method places a num­ber of columns of struc­tur­al steel around the foun­da­tion that rest on a load-bear­ing stra­tum under­ground. These columns are attached to the foun­da­tion after it has been raised hydrauli­cal­ly to pro­vide sol­id, per­ma­nent support.

Here’s how hydraulic push piers work:

• Based on engi­neer­ing data, includ­ing the size of the home and the com­po­si­tion of the soil, the num­ber of piers need­ed to raise and sup­port the foun­da­tion is cal­cu­lat­ed and place­ment is determined.
• A trained installer exca­vates next to the foun­da­tion at each point, dig­ging a small hole down to the footing.
• A notch is cut in the foot­ing and a steel brack­et is attached to the foundation.
• The steel pil­ing is then dri­ven, sec­tion by sec­tion, through the brack­et into the soil until it reach­es the load-bear­ing stratum.
• Once all pil­ings have been dri­ven, a hydraulic unit is attached to each brack­et and con­nect­ed to a cen­tral manifold.
• Using a pow­er­ful hydraulic pump, the entire affect­ed sec­tion of the home is lift­ed at once until it has been restored to level.
• While the struc­ture is being held at lev­el, each brack­et is per­ma­nent­ly affixed so the weight of the struc­ture is now sup­port­ed by mul­ti­ple steel columns.
• The hydraulic pres­sure is relieved, the pump­ing appa­ra­tus is removed and the holes are back­filled, leav­ing a sta­bi­lized foun­da­tion with no vis­i­ble evi­dence of the repair.

Of course, there are oth­er meth­ods of sup­port­ing a sunken foun­da­tion, such as drilled con­crete piers or pressed con­crete pil­ings, but hydraulic steel push piers are gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as the most cost-effec­tive and per­ma­nent method of repair. It is also pos­si­ble just to demol­ish and replace a foun­da­tion wall but it is a huge under­tak­ing and doesn’t ensure that fur­ther set­tling won’t occur.

If the signs of struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age described above sound way too famil­iar to you, you’re going to need an expert that can help regain the sta­bil­i­ty of your foun­da­tion and ensure that your home will remain struc­tural­ly sound. At U.S. Water­proof­ing, our team of advi­sors and installers has been spe­cial­ly trained to sta­bi­lize your home’s foun­da­tion with­out delay and with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion in the most cost-effec­tive way pos­si­ble. Why not ask for a free con­sul­ta­tion if things at your house don’t seem entire­ly on the level?

Tags: foundation repair, house foundation repair, home foundation repair, structural foundation repair, hydraulic push piers

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