I'd never heard of watering the foundations of your home, but apparently in Texas (at least, this part of Texas) it's a known thing.
It’s a simple upkeep that many may be unaware of. Ensuring your home’s foundation is well-taken care of is a task often overlooked but quite crucial.
“If you continue to let it go, you can be going from a $5 to $8,000 repair to a $50,000 repair,” AAA Guardian Foundation Repair Owner Jared Golden said.
And, no home can stand without a strong foundation.
It’s as simple as watering near the foundation for 25 to 30 minutes at a time, Golden said. In stage one drought restrictions, your foundation is exempt ... “We recommend putting a soaker hose down somewhere between 12 and 18 inches from the house and then water probably three to four times a week.”
With the record heat and dry land, Golden said that if you start to see dirt pull away from your house and cracks inside or outside doors starting to not close well, you might have a problem ... “Everything that’s sitting on that soil that dried out is going to fall with it. And so that’s what happened. And that’s why I would tell you to continue to water around your house.”
There's more at the link.
I haven't noticed any major cracks around our house foundation, but I did see them at the concrete slab of our new shed in the back yard. I guess I'd better get watering . . . and brace myself for higher water bills. Oh, well!
Peter
19 comments:
Yes, soil shrinkage during droughts occur and this stresses out slab on grade foundation systems (which many in Texas are). No frost line to contend with like up north, so the bottom of foundation can rest on grade, saving the cost of foundation walls that many basements up north are made from.
We do it occasionally (watering near foundation) but have been slipping lately - we need to do this too. Thanks for the reminder !
It depends on the type of soil. If the soil has mostly clay and topsoil, the shrinkage, and swelling, can place enough stress on a foundation to cause damage. With a properly designed foundation, having drilled footings, compacted embankment with a low plasticity index, and good drainage, there is no problem. Unfortunately, many homes were built on top of poor foundations and keeping the moisture content at an optimum level is necessary.
My father would water our foundation when it became very dry. The soil would crack enough during droughts to allow small objects, such as golf balls, to basically disappear into the ground.
It’s a Texas thing, I never heard of it in California.
I’ve heard issues with settling from friends, family, and businesses in Houston, Austin, and Fort Worth.
Cost for repairs varies, get multiple quotes. Or hire a civil engineer to specify the needed repairs, which can save a bunch of money.
Good point... sigh
We are in the beginning stages of a house project on land with expansive soil, our code requires the foundations go down to a level with stable material. We are waiting on more detailed excavations to see what will be required. Cost to remediate may sink the project..
Fingers crossed.
Our soil is highly expansive and the difference in sopping monsoon mud to baked summer will quickly destroy your slabs. Most anything decent here has post-tension slabs to prevent that. Not cheap but cheaper than repairs down the line.
https://www.concreteconstruction.net/how-to/construction/post-tensioned-slabs_o
My Dad used to do this to our house in Houston.
The soil there is a sticky clay called gumbo.
Slab repair is a big business there.
I am not sure that you can put enough water at the foundation but I have tried. I have put ten piers in the foundation in my office building outside Booth, Texas last year. And I put seventeen piers in the front of my house outside Rosenberg, Texas back in April. I had to raise the front of my house 1.5 inches. The foundation people have a three month backlog around the Houston area.
And here I am, sitting in a house, a former tavern, that is older than the USA. Its 20" thick sandstone walls sitting on rubble filled trenches dug into the clay soil that is no more than maybe 3 foot above ground water level on a dry summer day.
You know in which rooms (it's a big house) we have structural problems and problems with water pushing through the floor? Some of the rooms that got a later slab of concrete as a foundation/floor.
Concrete is a very very very important discovery. But sometimes people should use something different.
One of the issues here is that very few builders use any reinforcement when pouring foundation slabs... I'm off the opinion they shot, but they prefer to save a little money.
My office is having problems with this now; we've got uneven floors with holes and bumps all over.
J
recently read an article from one of those super smart a&m engineers and he said watering the foundation can actually cause issues...so who knows the real deal is...
"One of the issues here is that very few builders use any reinforcement when pouring foundation slabs..."
In the San Jose CA area, the rebar that is required for all concrete slabs has a mandated inspection prior to the pour. I've heard stories that if there is time between the inspection and pour, some enterprising people will remove the rebar assemblies for the next job.
I've seen houses that the sprinklers were turned off due to water costs, and with rain only part of the year, the inside walls and ceilings have cracks on those sections that are sitting on piers. One house had to have the rain gutters changed when the water wanted to drain out the opposite end due to the house settling.
Bought a house outside of Austin (wonderful town then) and had bee told this by more than one Texan. My neighbor behind me built their home a year prior to me buying. She asked what I was doing one day when she notice the soaker hose next to foundation. She had lived entire life in Galveston so she couldn't imagine this. Sold home after 11 years with no foundation problems. A year later her foundation cracked in half. What a nightmare that was as she had to leave for 9 months and cost was over $30K. Costly lesson.
I have called Texas home since 1967 when my family moved here and while going to college and in the military. I have lived here continuously for 43 years. My family moved to Greenville, Texas which is on black clay soils referred to as black gumbo or noon-day soil (it could be worked for farming only one day of the year at noon was the joke). Houses in Greenville had lots of foundation problems because of this soil. I have always heard that one should water the foundation to keep it stable. One method I have heard people do is to take soaker hose, porous hose that "sweats" water, and laying it against the foundation completely around the house. Then it is pressurized with water for about an hour or two daily to keep the foundation wet during dry periods.
I think I heard of the study that watering the foundation could cause damage as well as not watering it. What do you do -- water/don't water??
I am in Central Texas. The problem occurs when the soil is heavy clay with certain minerals in it. Do an Internet search for "Shrink–swell capacity". If you could keep the slab evenly moist on all sides, it would be OK, since it would float on top of the soil, as designed. The problem is that the sun dries it out more on the south and west sides. Trees and bushes suck the water from under parts of the slab. Shade from adjacent structures causes the soil to be less dry, etc. etc. The house leveling guys cannot repair a broken slab, they only prop it up to make the house level. In my experience, it will break again someplace else. A$k me how it i$ that I know thi$$$ I have seen schemes for avoiding the problem by embedding cables in the foundation when it is poured, by replacing a lot of the soil with sand or gravel, etc., etc. Nothing works for very long. My solution was to build on a pier-and-beam foundation. The piers are poured reinforced concrete 9 feet deep. If the house ever sinks unevenly, it is a do-it-yourself job to crawl under the house with a bottle jack and an armload of hardwood wedges to level it back perfectly.
Yep. We call that clay sub-soil we have in Houston gumbo.
The real reason is that people rather spend money in glitzy stuff rather than build a proper foundation.
My dad was a Civil Engineer, built condominiums (buildings several floors high) and expensive concrete mansions. One thing required was a soil study to properly design a foundation.
His opinion was that bell bottom piers are best and best to build when building the foundation.
I have "cable lock" pilings on one side of the house and bell bottom piers on the other. The Vikings side has settled in this drought but I do not think it is going to settle any more.
If pouring a foundation in Houston, spend the money on doing it right.
I live in the desert....we can go MONTHS without rain...and some years on!y get 5-6" of total precipitation. Nothing happens to our foundations.
The "joke" in Texas foundation repair is your house has either been repaired or will be.
As others have stated it's the shrinking and swelling along with the slip/slide that the clay soils are so prone to that cause the problem. Having CONSISTENT moisture is the key. The problem as Ultimate Ordinance noted is consistent is impossible due to exposure, trees, driveways, etc. Add in a neighbor doing something like putting in a pool that changes the grading and the existing drainage around your house is now totally different.
Best you can do is try to keep consistent moisture, monitor, and get a foundation company (or three) out on a regular basis to measure things so a repair can be done when small and relatively cheap.
@rickT, have your guy look at helical piers (called helical piles in other places). They were the solution for me with a slab on grade home build on a hillside on soft sand fill...
Had to go down 18ft on the downhill side of the house to get to undisturbed (ie, stable) soil. Downhill side of the house was 4" low vs. the uphill side that rested on undisturbed soil.
The house is now essentially on stilts, that are buried in the ground, and all the fill could slide out from under the house and the house should remain...
nick
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