What is the Winter Soil Doing to Your Foundation?

As we settle into winter, there are new weather patterns that impact the soil – and subsequently your home’s foundation! The winter months bring bouts of heavy moisture with rain, sleet, or snow. This moisture can cause pressure on your foundation and lead to serious symptoms of foundation failure.

Cracked, leaning, or bowing basement walls develop in homes of any age. The soil pressure around poured or block foundation walls changes seasonally.  In some cases, the soil's weight is simply too great to be held back by the foundation wall. In other cases, soil with high clay content expands during wet weather, exerting additional pressure against foundation walls. Whatever the cause, there are several telltale signs of foundation wall damage.

For example, the before and after photos seen above are from a basement wall in Duluth, MN. The owners were looking for a solution that would both fix the water issues, and also restore the structural issues with the ageing foundation. In this case, our team used steel I-beams called PowerBraces™ to correct the bowing wall. For more on this foundation wall repair project, see the photo album here. 

This wall repair system is connected to the concrete slab and the basement ceiling joists. Our dedicated service team tightens the braces at annual service appointments, pushing the wall outward. The goal of this unique system is to restore the wall to its original position and prevent any further wall cracks or foundation settlement.

In areas with cold winter climates, like Minnesota and Wisconsin, frost can put pressure on a wall and cause it to fail. This is especially true if the basement is unheated. Frost forces can be extremely powerful and can even lift shallow foundations up out of the ground, causing significant damage to the home.

The foundation problems caused by the time of year aren't just annoying - they become even bigger over time. Finding and fixing the root cause of the problem will restore your peace of mind. Don’t wait, get in touch with DBS to book an estimate with our team of experts!