Can I Sell my Home with Foun­da­tion Damage?

Aug 16, 2014 • By Matthew Stock.

Sell­ing a home is nev­er easy and eco­nom­ic events of the past few years have made it even more dif­fi­cult in many parts of the country.

The cli­mate for home sales has improved some, but it’s still a buyer’s mar­ket and home sell­ers have to do every­thing pos­si­ble to make their home stand out in a crowd­ed field of real estate list­ings. Even the best-main­tained home still needs spruc­ing up when it goes on the mar­ket if it’s to com­pete with the 10 oth­er homes a poten­tial buy­er may consider.

When there’s a prob­lem with the home, even a rel­a­tive­ly minor one, most list­ing agents will sug­gest strong­ly that the sell­er fix it before sell­ing the house as even the small­est of imper­fec­tions can cause a buy­er to take a pass when there are so many oth­er options.

Of course some prob­lems are more like­ly than oth­ers to scare off a poten­tial buy­er. Most buy­ers can look past a bad paint job, for exam­ple, because it’s an easy and inex­pen­sive thing to fix and some­thing they’d prob­a­bly change any­way. Land­scap­ing not com­plete­ly to their lik­ing, no big deal. Anti­quat­ed wash­er and dry­er? A turn-off for some buy­ers but not for everybody.

How­ev­er, when a poten­tial buy­er sees signs of a major prob­lem with a home, only those who are oth­er­wise head-over-heels in love with the place are like­ly to pro­ceed because the expense and incon­ve­nience of repair­ing the prob­lem are out­weighed by the home’s oth­er appeals. A leak­ing roof is a per­fect exam­ple because reroof­ing a large, two-sto­ry house can run well into five fig­ures. Remod­el­ing a bad­ly dat­ed and equipped kitchen can incur astro­nom­i­cal costs and replac­ing a rot­ting or sag­ging deck is expen­sive and time-consuming.

And then there’s the basement.

The most com­mon base­ment prob­lem that can scare away buy­ers is water seep­age. Signs of a wet base­ment are usu­al­ly pret­ty obvi­ous, from a musty smell to mold and mildew to water-dam­aged floor­ing or stored goods. Even if the buy­er doesn’t spot signs of water, most states, includ­ing Illi­nois, Indi­ana and Wis­con­sin, require that the sell­er pro­vide a dis­clo­sure state­ment regard­ing the prop­er­ty that specif­i­cal­ly address­es water in the basement.

A well-pre­pared home­buy­er will have researched base­ment water prob­lems and the method and cost of their repair before embark­ing on a house-hunt­ing ven­ture. Know­ing what caus­es water in the base­ment and how (and for how much) it can be fixed can set a poten­tial buyer’s mind at ease when deter­min­ing whether to make an offer on a home or keep looking.

When it comes to struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age, how­ev­er, the seri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion quick­ly takes a turn for the worse (for the sell­er, any­way.) Foun­da­tion dam­age sounds scary to most peo­ple and it is quite often a cost­ly, incon­ve­nient and time-con­sum­ing thing to repair. Just as with water in the base­ment, knowl­edge of how struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age occurs and how it can be repaired can be help­ful to both sell­er and buyer.

How does Struc­tur­al Foun­da­tion Dam­age Occur?

There are two basic kinds of struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age: set­tling or sink­ing and inward wall move­ment. Both are seri­ous and can desta­bi­lize the entire home.

The cul­prits in either sit­u­a­tion are soil and water, in one case too much of them; in the oth­er not enough.

The ​“too much” sce­nario occurs when soil sur­round­ing a home’s foun­da­tion becomes over­sat­u­rat­ed. The water that sat­u­rates the soil can come from direct rain­fall or, more like­ly, from over­flow­ing clogged rain gut­ters or down­spouts that dis­charge direct­ly below the eaves.

The soil that sur­rounds the foun­da­tion, at least in a ten-foot-wide strip, is par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to over­sat­u­ra­tion because it is the area that was orig­i­nal­ly exca­vat­ed to build the home. The exca­va­tor dug what was essen­tial­ly a big bowl in the earth for the foun­da­tion con­trac­tor to work in and, after the foun­da­tion was fin­ished, back­filled the soil up against the foun­da­tion walls.

Even though this soil is com­pact­ed man­u­al­ly after back­fill­ing, it remains less dense than the undis­turbed soil around it and leaves more room for water between the soil par­ti­cles. When you add in the clay soil com­mon in the Chica­go area, its absorbent qual­i­ties mean that the soil expands sig­nif­i­cant­ly when sat­u­rat­ed and this cre­ates pres­sure on the foun­da­tion walls.

When this pres­sure is suf­fi­cient­ly strong, the walls can begin to move inward. A mono­lith­ic con­crete wall, fixed at the bot­tom, will start to sep­a­rate from the adjoin­ing walls and tip inward from the top, a process known as rota­tion. A mason­ry wall will begin to crack along the mor­tar joints and will bow or bulge in the cen­ter, even going so far as to have con­crete blocks or stone shift out of the plane of the wall.

A lack of water and soil usu­al­ly hap­pens when drought con­di­tions are in place for a peri­od of time. Dur­ing nor­mal weath­er peri­ods, soil under the foun­da­tion is hydrat­ed by ground water and by water that seeps down to the water table after being absorbed on the sur­face. Chances are, the foun­da­tion was built on soil at that lev­el originally.

When drought con­di­tions occur, plants on the sur­face begin to extend their root sys­tems wider and deep­er in search of the water that is nec­es­sary for sur­vival. For small­er plants, that’s not very deep and many of them with­er and die dur­ing extend­ed droughts. Larg­er shrubs and trees, how­ev­er, can send roots very far into the ground and can actu­al­ly draw water from the soil under the foun­da­tion, espe­cial­ly when they’re plant­ed close to the house.

Once the mois­ture has been drawn from this soil it becomes des­ic­cat­ed and com­press­es, cre­at­ing a gap under the foun­da­tion. The weight of the foun­da­tion and the home it sup­ports will cause the foun­da­tion to set­tle or drop into this gap, desta­bi­liz­ing the house and caus­ing cracks to form in foun­da­tion and above­ground walls, win­dows and doors to stick and build­ing ele­ments, such as chim­neys, to sep­a­rate from the rest of the structure.

So, that’s how struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age occurs. Now, how do you fix it?

Fix­ing Struc­tur­al Foun­da­tion Dam­age Before You Sell

Struc­tur­al foun­da­tion repair has been around for a long time and his­tor­i­cal­ly relied on tra­di­tion­al build­ing mate­ri­als like steel and con­crete to repair and sta­bi­lize res­i­den­tial foun­da­tions. Today, new engi­neer­ing tech­nol­o­gy and the avail­abil­i­ty of lighter, stronger mate­ri­als has made struc­tur­al foun­da­tion repair eas­i­er and more con­ve­nient as well as more reli­able and cost-effective.

When repair­ing a dis­placed, rotat­ed wall, there are two options using dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als. The prop­er choice depends on the extent of the damage.

If the wall has moved two inch­es or less, it can be sta­bi­lized by apply­ing car­bon fiber strips in a num­ber and place­ment deter­mined by engi­neer­ing data. An installer grinds the wall smooth at the point of appli­ca­tion to improve adher­ence then uses indus­tri­al strength epoxy to apply the woven car­bon fiber strip to the wall. The car­bon fiber strip is affixed to the floor joist above with steel angle iron and the wall has been com­plete­ly stabilized.

Car­bon fiber can be paint­ed over and is bare­ly vis­i­ble once completed.

If the wall has moved more than two inch­es, car­bon fiber is not rec­om­mend­ed. The old repair tech­nique was to install a stan­dard four- or six-inch steel I‑beam against the wall which would stop fur­ther move­ment but was obtru­sive and screamed ​”dam­age” to any­one who saw it. Today, low-pro­file steel chan­nels are used that can be cov­ered com­plete­ly with a 2 x 4 stud wall.

The chan­nels are bolt­ed to the foun­da­tion foot­ings and attached to the floor joists above where they are ten­sioned to hold the wall in place.

For a foun­da­tion that has dropped or sunken due to des­ic­cat­ed soil, an entire­ly dif­fer­ent approach is require to sta­bi­lize the foun­da­tion and the home.

A skilled foun­da­tion repair con­trac­tor will use hydraulic steel push piers to raise a foun­da­tion back to lev­el and sta­bi­lize it there. The num­ber and place­ment of piers is deter­mined by ana­lyz­ing engi­neer­ing data and by the size and con­struc­tion of the home.

To install hydraulic push piers, a small-diam­e­ter hole is dug at the site of each pier, expos­ing the foot­ing. A notch is cut into the foot­ing and a steel brack­et is attached per­ma­nent­ly there.

A hydraulic ram is mount­ed on the brack­et and used to dri­ve sec­tions of a steel col­umn into the earth until it reach­es a load-bear­ing stra­tum. After the piers have been dri­ven, a hydraulic pump is attached to all of them and used to lift the house back to lev­el. The brack­ets on the foot­ings are bolt­ed to the piers and the house is now stabilized.

After the hydraulic sys­tem is removed and the holes are back­filled the repair is com­plete­ly invisible.

So, can you sell your house with foun­da­tion dam­age? Prob­a­bly, all oth­er things being equal, but you will have to dis­close the dam­age and will prob­a­bly end up giv­ing a large cred­it to the buy­er for repairs. A bet­ter approach may be to com­plete the repairs before putting the house on the mar­ket to elim­i­nate the prob­lem from poten­tial buy­ers’ minds.

To sta­bi­lize that foun­da­tion, you’ll need the advice and ser­vices of a pro­fes­sion­al foun­da­tion repair con­trac­tor who can fix the prob­lem quick­ly, per­ma­nent­ly and cost-effec­tive­ly. At U.S. Water­proof­ing our foun­da­tion repair experts rely on engi­neer­ing data and years of expe­ri­ence and employ the lat­est tech­niques and mate­ri­als to ensure that your home is safe and sta­ble. Why not ask for our free advice?

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