The Impact of Poor Drainage on Your Home’s Foundation
Your home’s foundation helps distribute the building’s weight evenly, providing structural support, stability and protection, but poor drainage can put your home’s foundation at risk. To effectively protect your home’s structural integrity, you must manage your property’s water drainage.
While the consequences of poor drainage are serious, there are ways to manage your property’s drainage and protect your home. Partnering with the professionals at Drainage Masters LLC is the best way to ensure your home has the right foundation drainage systems to address your specific needs.
What Causes Drainage Issues Around the Foundation?
When excess water accumulates around your property’s foundation due to poor drainage, it can cause costly and potentially hazardous issues.
There are three main ways this excess water can damage your foundation:
External water can put pressure on the foundation walls.
Water washes away the soil that supports the foundation and holds it in place, causing instability.
Expansion and contraction cause cracks in the foundation.
Impact of Poor Drainage on Your Foundation
Poor drainage can cause your foundation to become vulnerable. These are some ways poor drainage affects your foundation:
Water foundation damage: When exposed to moisture for too long, foundation materials weaken, allowing water to seep into crawl spaces or basements.
Soil erosion: Poor drainage can cause erosion of the soil that supports the foundation, resulting in voids that affect foundational stability.
Cracks in the foundation: Some soils, like clay, expand when wet and can put pressure on the foundation, causing it to heave and crack. Additionally, excess moisture causes soil to shift too much, which can cause the foundation to become unsettled and eventually crack. With time, small cracks can worsen and affect the structure’s stability.
Mold spreading: Moisture from the foundation eventually makes its way into basements and crawlspaces. Since mold thrives in moist environments, it spreads from the foundation to basements or crawlspaces. The mold can subsequently spread throughout the home and cause health problems.
How to Improve Drainage Around Your Property
If you have concerns about your property’s foundation and drainage, you can turn to the experts at Drainage Masters LLC. We’re a family-run business with decades of experience assessing our clients’ properties and installing custom solutions to solve their drainage issues.
Explore some of our drainage services:
Basements: We can install tailored footing drains, basement drainage systems, and French drains to address any water intrusion in your basement.
Crawlspaces: Our comprehensive crawlspace drainage solutions include sump pump installation, low-point drains, vapor barrier repair and encapsulation, which keeps your crawlspace and foundation dry.
Driveways and road runoff: If your driveways and parking areas have pooling water, we can help with regrading, channel drains and culvert installations.
Roof drainage: We offer down sprout repairs, repairing and redirecting your existing system, rain drain rehabbing and drywell installation services to ensure your property has proper roof drainage.
