Why a Handy­man Should Not Do Your Foun­da­tion Crack Repair

Mar 25, 2012 • By Matthew Stock.

Home­own­ers tend to have their favorite go-to guy to keep up with basic home repairs and their ​“hon­ey-do” lists. It’s often dif­fi­cult to find a good handy­man, but when you final­ly do, you pile more and more on his punch list. Every­thing from touch­ing up the paint in the mas­ter bath­room to installing that new light fix­ture you just picked up from Home Depot. 

Just do your­self one favor. Leave the repair of foun­da­tion wall cracks to a water­proof­ing pro­fes­sion­al. Here are 5 rea­sons why:

1. They don’t have expe­ri­ence in diag­nos­ing the root of the problem

Base­ment wall cracks hap­pen for a num­ber of rea­sons. The cause dic­tates the method of repair. Base­ment water­proofers tend to take a more in-depth approach. The bet­ter com­pa­nies per­form an inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or eval­u­a­tion of your home and make proac­tive rec­om­men­da­tions such as extend­ing your down­spouts and sump dis­charge line to pre­vent future prob­lems as well as solv­ing the prob­lem at hand.

2. They aren’t prop­er­ly equipped

Base­ment water­proof­ing is a high­ly spe­cial­ized indus­try which requires spe­cif­ic tools and mate­ri­als. Handy­men aren’t well versed in foun­da­tion crack repair meth­ods. They usu­al­ly per­form super­fi­cial sur­face repairs, such as chip­ping out the crack and patch­ing it with hydraulic cement. A big no-no.

3. They might not be around to stand behind the war­ran­ty (if they even offer one!)

I’ve men­tioned in pri­or arti­cles that a war­ran­ty is only as good as the com­pa­ny that stands behind it. Most base­ment water­proof­ing com­pa­nies offer a life­time war­ran­ty on res­i­den­tial work. What good is ​“life­time” if your go-to guy moves or retires in five years?

4. They are often under­in­sured or uninsured

I admit this is a broad gen­er­al­iza­tion, but the truth is most self-employed handy­men don’t have suf­fi­cient insur­ance. There’s a degree of poten­tial lia­bil­i­ty on almost any home improve­ment project. If a ​“moon­lighter” with­out insur­ance gets hurt in your home, you can be liable for their med­ical bills. I per­son­al­ly wouldn’t let any­one do work for our com­pa­ny or my res­i­dence with­out check­ing their insur­ance first.

5. Their repairs aren’t con­sid­ered to be legit­i­mate when you even­tu­al­ly sell the house

Most home inspec­tors know the dif­fer­ence between pro­fes­sion­al and ama­teur water­proof­ing repairs. If they don’t, they prob­a­bly haven’t had the chance to sit through one of our edu­ca­tion­al sem­i­nars we peri­od­i­cal­ly do for orga­ni­za­tions such as NICAS­HI. A savvy home buy­er will also ask for the paper­work that came along with the repair. If they see ​“Joe’s Handy­man Ser­vice” on the invoice, how con­fi­dent do you think they are that it will be a last­ing repair? 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not try­ing to put handy­men out of busi­ness. We have a great work­ing rela­tion­ship with many handy­men and con­trac­tors; we are con­stant­ly refer­ring each oth­er work (no, we don’t believe in ​“kick­backs”). Take DR Ser­vices for exam­ple. They are a well known con­trac­tor on the North Shore. You would need them, for instance, to remove dry­wall in order to expose the leak in your foun­da­tion. They’ll then refer us to diag­nose the seep­age prob­lem and make the nec­es­sary repairs because they know that we can do a bet­ter job than they can. So we scratch each other’s back. 

Any handy­men out there who want to chime in? How about a home­own­er who has had a foun­da­tion crack repair fail on them? Would love to hear from you.

Tags: foundation cracks, basement crack, cracks in basement walls, foundation waterproofing, researching companies, how to choose a waterproofing company, exterior foundation crack repair, epoxy injection

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