Outside soil pressures can make your basement walls bow and buckle. This can destabilize your foundation causing related problems and a devaluation of your primary investment and most valuable asset: Your home.
- Hydrostatic Pressure in Soils
- Interior Water Intrusion
- Wall Destabilization
Why Your Walls Bow:
Excess moisture in the soil around your home can cause expansive soils to swell and also cause hydrostatic pressure strong enough to cause your basement walls to bow inward. This pressure and bowing puts stress on the basement walls to crack and lose their strength. Since your basement walls are a key part of the support structure of your home, other serious problems can be caused from the basement up to the roof.
Multiple solutions may be required to deal with the problem including:
- Management of the exterior water to help eliminate excess moisture
- Interior water management to move the water that does get into your basement away from your living space
- Wall anchors to help stabilize the bowing walls and help them maintain their support capabilities
Bowing and cracking basement walls should not be ignored. Left unchecked, some homeowners have had to replace entire walls.
Bowing Walls Can Cause a Host of Other Problems
- Loss of valuable living space
- Settlement and structural foundation damage
- Structural foundation damage as a result of hydrostatic pressure
- Dangerous loss of foundation stability
- Bowing, cracking or compression of basement walls
- Electrical and plumbing damage
- Damage to furnace and appliances
- Stress on framing structure