Foundation is out of your sight all the time, but fixing it is important because when you leave it with unresolved issues, you are risking your home and your family's health as a whole. A damaged foundation usually means that water is the major source of all your problems, with indications of mold eruption and pest growth. Trying to hide your problems won't lessen it in the future. Instead, you and your family may suffer from chronic breathing problems, constant headaches, allergies, and skin irritation.
How to Detect the Need for Your Foundation Repair?
Some signs obviously state that your foundation needs repair, while others are invisible ones sneaking around without your knowledge. Hydrostatic pressure is often invisible and results from water intrusion, while cracks are prominently present. Here are some signs that will help you detect your foundation problems:
● You may notice cracks on both the exteriors or interiors of your foundation walls.
● A moist foundation causes your floors to sag, and you will experience bouncy floors without proper leveling.
● If you have a damaged drainage system, you will witness standing water all over your foundation.
● When your doors and windows dislocate from their original position, you certainly have foundation issues.
● If you spot moisture problems in your foundation, you will observe black patchy molds on walls or ceilings.
● A large portion of air comes from the area beneath your home, so you may sense a musty odor in all the rooms when you have a wet foundation.
● A settling foundation exerts pressure over your foundation walls and leads to separated drawers and counters from your kitchen walls.
Foundations are of different types, including basement, crawl space concrete slabs, and pier foundations. Depending on this variation, your foundation may be affected in different ways. Moreover, climatic conditions affect your foundation's integrity. Persistent cracks in your foundation will often result in unlevelled slopes around the foundation of your home. Consequently, your foundation observes signs of standing water all the time. Regarding the cracks, some hairline cracks are fixable with cosmetic repairs. However, uneven patterns of cracks all over your foundation may stand out as deeper issues affecting your home.
What Happens When You Delay Foundation or Wall Repair Work in Your Home?
While everything else can wait, you cannot compromise your foundation by delaying its repair plans. And if you are wondering about the suitable time to carry out repair activities. It's now! These are potential outcomes you may face when you undermine even a small foundation issue for a long time:
1. The longer you wait, the more your problems
Foundation problems do not go away on their own. You need to call professionals to intervene because compromising your home's integrity now will eventually lead to a collapse.
2. More water seepage
One of the common reasons for foundation failure is water seepage. Your foundation settles when the soil beneath your home moves due to expansive soil. Moreover, water easily seeps into your basement through cracks and holes in the walls of your foundation, leaving stains all over the place, a foul odor, and a suitable environment for mold to grow. In this way, a single problem becomes a cause of other issues like bowed walls, so you must opt for foundation wall repair immediately.
3. The more you delay, the more expensive your repair will be.
When you detect a problem, you must plan your repair work as soon as possible so that a small fixable problem today does not escalate into a bigger one. For instance, you could easily fix minor cracks at minimal cost if you had intervened earlier. But the more you ignore, you will have to deal with expensive foundation repairs. In the future, it will not just be about foundation repair but also damaged walls, doors, windows, and interiors under your home improvement project.
4. Degraded value of your home
If dealing with foundation problems is difficult for you, it is equally difficult for your potential customers to buy your home. When you leave your issues unresolved, they will be a deal breaker to your client and will definitely degrade your property valuation, making it hard to sell your home. Your home's value automatically increases when the buyers don't have to deal with foundational damage from the start.
5. Peace of mind
After foundation wall repair, your leaning walls will be straight once more. More importantly, once you have completed all the procedures of repair, you don't have to worry about flooding or moisture intrusion inside your home anymore. All in all, it's all about living in peace, knowing that your home's base is well structured with no risk of structural damage.
