Why are Home Addi­tions Prone to Struc­tur­al Foun­da­tion Damage?

Oct 11, 2012 • By Matthew Stock with Barry Schilling.

You and your fam­i­ly loved your home, liked the neigh­bor­hood (and the neigh­bors) and hat­ed the thought of mov­ing. How­ev­er, your grow­ing fam­i­ly soon began to make the house feel cramped so you decid­ed to stay put and built an addi­tion on to the house — a cou­ple of extra bed­rooms and a fam­i­ly room.

Years lat­er, your fam­i­ly is still hap­py in your home but you’ve begun to notice some odd things hap­pen­ing to the house: There are cracks in the dry­wall in those new­er bed­rooms upstairs, the door from the fam­i­ly room to the back yard is hard to open and close, and you’ve noticed that the floors in the addi­tion have tak­en on a notice­able slant toward an out­side cor­ner. Uh-oh, you have struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age.

How does Struc­tur­al Foun­da­tion Dam­age Hap­pen to a Home Addition?

If you were forced to add liv­ing space to your home, it had prob­a­bly been built a while ago. Accord­ing to the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Home Builders, the aver­age home in the U.S. includ­ed 2700 square feet in 2009 but only 1400 square feet in 1970, so it’s more com­mon for old­er homes to be expand­ed than new­er ones.

If the orig­i­nal struc­ture of your home had been in place for sev­er­al decades, any set­tling or move­ment of the foun­da­tion had prob­a­bly tak­en place long before your addi­tion was built. Also, the orig­i­nal foun­da­tion, whether or not it includ­ed a base­ment or crawl space, had prob­a­bly been built with spread foot­ings and oth­er con­struc­tion tech­niques that have helped main­tain its stability.

Most con­trac­tors in the Mid­west that spe­cial­ize in home addi­tions will pour a con­crete slab for the new con­struc­tion with­out first installing a spread foot­ing under the foun­da­tion walls. With no spread foot­ings, struc­tures are more like­ly to set­tle abnor­mal­ly dur­ing times of drought.

The new addi­tion increas­es the size of the home’s roof, which increas­es the amount of water flow­ing from down­spouts, usu­al­ly at the cor­ners of the new addi­tion. All this water sat­u­rates the soil and, when a drought like the cur­rent one occurs, the soil dries out and shrinks, caus­ing the out­er cor­ners of the addi­tion to sink. This rais­es the part of the addi­tion that is attached to the orig­i­nal structure.

Because of these and oth­er con­struc­tion fac­tors, your addi­tion is mov­ing and the rest of the house is stay­ing still. This accounts for the cracked dry­wall, jammed doors and win­dows and slant­ed or mis­aligned floors. When you see these things hap­pen­ing, you know you have foun­da­tion dam­age.

Also, if it was a DIY or handy­man-built addi­tion, it’s pos­si­ble that the foun­da­tion walls weren’t dug deep enough to resist frost heave in cold tem­per­a­tures. What­ev­er the cause, you have a prob­lem that requires the ser­vices of a struc­tur­al foun­da­tion repair con­trac­tor. Choose one that will uti­lize the lat­est meth­ods to raise and sta­bi­lize the foun­da­tion under your addi­tion so that it is as func­tion­al and seam­less as it was the day it was built.

The struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age experts at U.S. Water­proof­ing have years of expe­ri­ence in restor­ing all kinds of foun­da­tions and ensur­ing they remain sta­ble. Regard­less of the type of under­pin­ning that your foun­da­tion needs, we’re pre­pared to return your home to its lev­el best, quick­ly and cost-effec­tive­ly. Why not ask for a free con­sul­ta­tion?

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

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