Regardless of the materials used and the design of your house, most basements are susceptible to suffering from many types of cracks because, over time, cracks are common occurrences. According to waterproofing and foundation crack repair professionals like Woodridge foundation repair, cracks are a reason to worry for most homeowners because when left unattended, they will let moisture into your basement and cause the growth of mold and mildew.
Over time, the excess moisture in your basement can contaminate your food and water. When this happens, your home can experience unhealthy surroundings that also lead to the spread of food and waterborne diseases. So, to ensure your home doesn’t suffer from cracks, especially foundation cracks in the basement, let’s take a look in detail at what foundational cracks are and some of the effective and popular ways you can fix them.
Understanding Foundation Cracks
Unlike other cracks, a foundation crack threatens your property’s integrity. It can be a crack that results from existing property problems, such as the presence of holes in walls that allow water to penetrate through. Or the crack can result from a lack of strength of the concrete to prevent water from seeping. At the same time, your home can suffer from foundation cracks in the basement because of walls that are leaning, sheering, or bowing.
How To Fix the Different Types of Foundation Cracks in the Basement
Your basement can suffer from structural or non-structural cracks. Structural foundation cracks threaten your house’s structural strength and integrity and can occur because of existing problems to the entire property’s integrity.
Or, your home can suffer structural foundation cracks when its walls are leaning or have holes that allow excessive moisture to penetrate. Unlike their counterparts, non-structural foundation cracks do not threaten your house’s structural strength and integrity, but still, they can damage your home by allowing water into the basement.
Fixing Structural Foundation Cracks
Because these cracks threaten your house’s structural strength and integrity, how you fix them is different from those that don’t. To fix a structural foundation crack, you first need to determine how wide the crack is and inspect if it causes damage to the concrete block walls and the brick facia.
Also, determine if the cracks run horizontally across your home’s foundational walls. Then check if they are accompanied by bowing walls or are vertical parallel to each other.
On top of that, before you decide on the method of fixing a structural foundation crack, check to see if it is large and diagonal. You can inspect for these features by inspecting the crack along your walls’ corners to see if it’s mirrored on its sides.
Next, look at the crack and determine if it runs across the ceiling and down to the walls. After you examine the cracks and find out they are structural foundation ones, some of the methods you can use to fix them include the following.
Using Wall Plate Anchors
Wall plate anchors are construction rods that stabilize cracks on walls and basements. You can use them to secure your basement or retain your walls back to their normal positions when they are leaning, bowing, or cracking, especially due to the effects of soil pressure.
Unlike other ways of repairing structural foundation cracks, wall plate anchors are simple and effective, and you can easily install them within walls or basements. You can also use them when your walls bugle inwards or outwards due to hidden cracks in the basement.
Also, if the structural foundation cracks in your basement are horizontal, wall plate anchors can correctly repair them by stopping the adjacent walls to the basement from bowing. This way, the wall plate anchors will connect their rods to the walls and torque them until the bowing or leaning wall pulls outwards.
When this happens, moisture will stop penetrating inside the basement, thus reducing the susceptibility of your house to falling due to dampness.
Using C- Channel Anchors
Like Wall plate anchors, you can also use C-channel anchors to repair and fix structural foundation cracks that make the walls of your house sheer or lean and cause problems to the basement.
When you use C-channel anchors instead of wall plate anchors to fix foundation cracks, they repair cracks by distributing the structural property integrity across the vertical lengths of the basement. As this happens, the basement and the walls stop sheering and leaning, causing them to return to normal positions.
Also, C-channel anchors have steam beams that you anchor outside the basement to help pull leaning walls or those that bugle inward back to their normal position. This way, your basement won’t be able to allow moisture to penetrate through because as the walls bulge outward and back to their positions, the available cracks get sealed.
Fixing Non-structural Foundation Cracks
Unlike their counterparts, non-structural cracks are those that don’t pose threats to your house’s structural strength or integrity. Still, these cracks can damage your basement by allowing water to seep into it and cause mold growth.
They can also damage the basement by allowing pests, which can destroy it by chewing and gnawing. As a result, to repair and fix a non-structural foundation crack, some of the methods you can use include the following.
Epoxy Injection
Epoxy crack injection is an economical way of repairing cracks in walls, slabs, piers, and house columns, especially those made of concrete. Epoxy injection is made in a design that makes it effortless to fix cracks by restoring the integrity and strength of different structural elements in cracked concrete houses.
To repair a non-structural crack using an epoxy injection, patch the area using the injection and an epoxy bonding solution. Then, inject the cracks and allow them to reinforce the walls back to their normal positions.
Allow the epoxy bonding solution to dry and stick before you remove the injection. Repeat the procedure until the previously bulging walls return to normal positions or bulge outward.
Using Carbon Fiber Staples
Carbon fiber staples or straps are construction elements that stabilize and reinforce foundation walls in homes made of concrete or other materials. When used to repair non-structural cracks, a carbon fiber staple is inserted along the crack into its ground slots.
Afterward, the strap fuses into the concrete to seal the cracks and prevent moisture from seeping into the basement.
More importantly, to correctly fix foundation cracks in your basement, you can decide to work with a foundation crack repair expert. This way, you prevent the unexpected mistakes you could make if you fix the cracks yourself.
Reach out to http://www.seepageseal.com/ or contact them via the following handles for professional help.
Seepageseal,
7841 Woodridge Dr, Woodridge IL 60517,
(630)474-5325.
Find us on Social Media
https://www.facebook.com/SeepageSeal.Waterproofing
https://twitter.com/seepageseal
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYZMCU5/_YZAqyTjSvna-kVw