Can the Design of Your Home Cause Struc­tur­al Foun­da­tion Damage?

Apr 4, 2013 • By Matthew Stock with Barry Schilling.

Dri­ve or walk through any city and its sur­round­ing sub­urbs, per­haps with a detour into the coun­try­side, and it will quick­ly become appar­ent that there are lots of dif­fer­ent kinds of homes. Obvi­ous­ly, there’s a wide range of sizes, from small ranch­es and cot­tages all the way up to 5- and 6,000-square-foot man­sions. Styles, too, vary all over the place: bun­ga­lows, Colo­nials, Geor­gians, split-lev­els, bi-lev­els, Cape Cods – the list goes on.

Con­struc­tion of these homes, though, is a key to how they may be impact­ed by struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age. Experts in foun­da­tion repair have learned through the work of struc­tur­al engi­neers, not to men­tion years of onsite inspec­tion and obser­va­tion, that cer­tain types of hous­es are more prone than oth­ers to suf­fer struc­tur­al foun­da­tion damage. 

Which Homes are More Vul­ner­a­ble to Struc­tur­al Foun­da­tion Damage?

Two major fac­tors come into play in deter­min­ing which homes are more like­ly to suf­fer struc­tur­al dam­age to their foun­da­tions – depth of foun­da­tion and the con­struc­tion of above­ground structures. 

Deep Foun­da­tions – Home foun­da­tions that are eight feet or more deep are more sus­cep­ti­ble to crack­ing and rota­tion caused by lat­er­al pres­sure. With a trend in new home con­struc­tion toward deep­er base­ments to cre­ate greater ceil­ing height, this sit­u­a­tion is becom­ing more common.

To illus­trate, here’s a sim­ple exam­ple: Take a full-sized pen­cil in both hands and try to break it in the mid­dle. For a per­son of aver­age strength this should be easy. Now, take one of the bro­ken halves and try to do the same thing. Not so easy. The same goes for poured con­crete or mason­ry foun­da­tion walls. The more wall that is exposed to the forces of lat­er­al pres­sure caused by sat­u­rat­ed soil, the eas­i­er it is for the wall to move, crack and sep­a­rate from the struc­ture above.

Frame Con­struc­tion – Wood frame con­struc­tion is by far the most wide­ly used tech­nique in build­ing new homes. Even hous­es that are faced with brick or stone usu­al­ly start out as frame because it is a strong, eco­nom­i­cal and effi­cient way of build­ing. Even though a frame house doesn’t seem light in weight, it actu­al­ly is when com­pared to old­er styles of con­struc­tion where mason­ry walls sup­port­ed the structure.

Because of its rel­a­tive­ly light weight, a frame house doesn’t exert as much down­ward pres­sure on its foun­da­tion, which would act to strength­en the foun­da­tion walls against lat­er­al pres­sure. Homes faced with brick, stone or oth­er mason­ry will fare bet­ter because, even though the mason­ry may not be load-bear­ing, it adds con­sid­er­ably to the weight of the structure.

Num­ber and Size of Win­dows – Anoth­er trend in home con­struc­tion that has been preva­lent for some time is to design and build homes with lots and lots of win­dows. This makes for bright, sun­ny inte­ri­ors — a sell­ing point for both new and exist­ing homes. How­ev­er, all that expo­sure and sun­light may have con­se­quences for the home’s foundation.

Sim­ply put, win­dow glass is a lot lighter than even frame con­struc­tion mate­ri­als, let alone mason­ry. Just as in the point above regard­ing frame con­struc­tion, a house with many square feet of win­dows is going to be com­par­a­tive­ly lighter and will exert less down­ward pres­sure on its foun­da­tion than one with few­er. Because more weight from above will help sta­bi­lize the foun­da­tion, great views can lead to not-so-great foun­da­tion damage.

Regard­less of any con­tri­bu­tion made by the home it sup­ports, a foun­da­tion with struc­tur­al dam­age is a seri­ous prob­lem and requires seri­ous repair. Also, pre­ven­tive mea­sures involv­ing water man­age­ment out­side the foun­da­tion can be tak­en to pre­vent these fac­tors from caus­ing dam­age at all. In either sit­u­a­tion, the home­own­er needs the ser­vices of a foun­da­tion repair con­trac­tor that under­stands the caus­es of struc­tur­al dam­age and has the exper­tise to repair and/​or pre­vent them. At U.S. Water­proof­ing, our foun­da­tion experts can rec­om­mend the most effec­tive and cost-effi­cient per­ma­nent repair and help a home­own­er take pre­ven­ta­tive steps to ensure his or her foundation’s future sta­bil­i­ty. Why not ask us for a free con­sul­ta­tion?

Tags: foundation repair, foundation damage, structural foundation damage, house foundation repair, home foundation repair, structural foundation repair

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