Repair­ing Base­ment Foun­da­tion Cracks in St. Charles IL 60174, 60175

May 11, 2014 • By Matthew Stock.

St. Charles IL is a thriv­ing city on the banks of the Fox Riv­er in Chicago’s west­ern sub­urbs. Years ago, St. Charles was thought to be ​“way out there” but, as the Chica­go metrop­o­lis has marched west­ward, it’s become a com­muter suburb.

The pop­u­la­tion of St. Charles has dou­bled since 1977 but real­ly boomed dur­ing the 1990’s when loads of new hous­es were built, many along the Ran­dall Road cor­ri­dor. Down­town St. Charles, how­ev­er, has retained much of the fla­vor of the old days with quaint shops, gal­leries and restaurants.

Anoth­er St. Charles tra­di­tion that has endured is the Kane Coun­ty Flea Mar­ket, held month­ly at the coun­ty fair­grounds in St. Charles. The flea mar­ket has been run­ning for more than 45 years and draws huge crowds from all over the Mid­west to browse for antique fur­ni­ture, col­lec­tables and more mod­ern bar­gains. It is one of the longest run­ning mar­kets any­where and one of the largest with as many as 1000 ven­dors on a giv­en weekend.

With all those homes in St. Charles, both new and old, it’s inevitable that some home­own­ers will dis­cov­er base­ment foun­da­tion cracks in their home. Depend­ing on cer­tain fac­tors, such cracks may be mere­ly trou­ble­some or dan­ger­ous to the sta­bil­i­ty of the home and should be repaired promptly.

Diag­nos­ing and Repair­ing Base­ment Foun­da­tion Cracks in St. Charles

Base­ment foun­da­tion cracks fall gen­er­al­ly into two cat­e­gories: struc­tur­al and non-struc­tur­al. Non-struc­tur­al cracks are less seri­ous but can be the sources of sig­nif­i­cant water seep­age. Struc­tur­al cracks, on the oth­er hand, can threat­en the sta­bil­i­ty of the entire foun­da­tion and the home it supports.

Non-struc­tur­al cracks are usu­al­ly nar­row, less than 1÷8”, and do not show up in any detectable pat­tern. In a poured con­crete foun­da­tion, these cracks can appear any­where and are usu­al­ly more or less ver­ti­cal. In a mason­ry foun­da­tion, the cracks fol­low the mor­tar joints between the mason­ry units (con­crete block, brick, stone) giv­ing the appear­ance of a stairstep pattern.

Struc­tur­al cracks are wider than the non-struc­tur­al vari­ety and typ­i­cal­ly will appear in a pat­tern. In a poured con­crete foun­da­tion, there is nor­mal­ly one ver­ti­cal crack in the mid­dle of the dam­aged wall and two angled cracks across the upper cor­ners. Not vis­i­ble from inside are two more ver­ti­cal cracks at the out­side cor­ners where the dam­aged wall has begun to sep­a­rate from the adja­cent ones.

In a mason­ry wall, the cracks also fol­low a stairstep pat­tern but lead to a bulging or bowed area in the cen­ter of the wall.

Repair­ing a non-struc­tur­al crack in a poured con­crete wall is done by inject­ing the crack with expand­ing polyurethane to seal it against fur­ther seep­age. Fix­ing a non-struc­tur­al crack in a mason­ry wall is a lit­tle more involved as it requires instal­la­tion of an exte­ri­or water­proof­ing mem­brane. Seep­age can also be man­aged by installing inte­ri­or drain tile and cov­er­ing the inte­ri­or wall with a vapor barrier.

Struc­tur­al cracks are signs of a larg­er prob­lem that must be repaired rather than the crack itself. For exam­ple cracks that indi­cate inward wall move­ment point to a need for wall sta­bi­liza­tion that can be done with car­bon fiber strips if the wall move­ment is min­i­mal or with low-pro­file chan­nel steel if the wall has moved more than 2 inches.

When sink­ing or drop­ping of the foun­da­tion is indi­cat­ed, the foun­da­tion must be raised back to lev­el and sta­bi­lized with hydraulic push piers.

Depend­ing on the type and loca­tion of a base­ment foun­da­tion crack a home­own­er will need the ser­vices of a base­ment water­proof­ing con­trac­tor or a foun­da­tion repair expert. At U.S. Water­proof­ing, our base­ment water­proof­ing team has been seal­ing cracks since our found­ing in 1957 and our foun­da­tion repair experts use engi­neer­ing data and the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy to repair and sta­bi­lize foun­da­tions per­ma­nent­ly and cost-effec­tive­ly. So, why not ask for our free advice?

Would you like to know more about base­ment foun­da­tion cracks? Please post your ques­tions in the Com­ments box below.

Tags: st. charles basement foundation cracks, basement foundation cracks st. charles, kane county basement waterproofing

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