Before & After Photos

Foundation settlement is one of the most common causes of foundation problems that we see. The settlement is caused by the soil under and around the home shifting, because it is not packed down nearly as much as the undisturbed ground around it. The severity of settlement really depends on a couple of factors; one being, how tightly packed the soil was after the foundation of the home was built, and how long the homeowner has gone without addressing the problem.

Unfortunately, this homeowner had been living with this problem for awhile without getting it taken care of. As you can see from the before photo, the crack in this chimney is not just a small crack, but rather a huge gap. This is very dangerous, because you never know when something could happen and the entire chimney could come down. This is definitely something that you do not want to wait on, but rather get taken care of sooner, rather than later.

While the after photo is not the completely finished product, it does show the difference between the chimney before the push piers were installed and afterwards. As you can see, the gap has been almost completely closed through the raising of the piers. You can also see the difference that the piers made in the duct tape on the chimney, especially the piece on the right. 

Many of the projects that we work on aren't just a single problem, such as high humidity in a crawlspace or bowing walls in a basement. There are a lot of jobs that may have a few different problems that we can take of with different products and systems that we have. A great example of this is when there is a home with a sagging floor that needs SmartJacks, but also needs CleanSpace to help with the high humidity levels in the crawlspace.

This project was very similar to that example except the home needed push piers in order stabilize the foundation and CleanSpace liner to keep water and moisture out of the crawlspace. The first photo shows one of the areas that was cracking and where many of the push piers were installed. Here you can see one of our crew members working on the push piers!

The after photo shows the same area, but after the push piers had lifted and stabilized this area. The CleanSpace was laid out after the push pier work had been done in order to encapsulate the area. As you can see, the CleanSpace is laid out extremely tight against the wall of the crawlspace and is sealed extremely well. The CleanSpace liner does an excellent job at preventing moisture from getting into the crawlspace. 

This Wellford home had a lot of foundation work that was completed over a few day period; this work included installing push piers, wall anchors, and a few SmartJacks! They installed SmartJacks to support a sagging floor above the garage of this home. The SmartJacks were installed on either side of the garage door; to do this, a small block of concrete was cut out and leveled for the SmartJack to be placed in.

The "before" picture shows what the area looked like during the work, but before the SmartJack was installed. The photo shows how the crew cut out a small concrete area, roughly the size of a SmartJack plate.

The "after" photo shows the same area after the SmartJack had been installed and the hole had been filled back up with concrete. While the base was definitely not the most important part of this job, it does show the quality of our work. The real difference that these SmartJacks made was keeping the floor from bowing and sinking down.

Homes must be supported by something; usual homeowners believe that placing a cinder block under their floor joist will solve the problem. They are wrong. When placing a cinder block or bricks under a floor joist it doesn’t keep the home from sinking. The bricks will sink down into the ground as well, defeating the purpose. The best way to fix this problem is to use a permanent solution such as SmartJacks. SmartJack posts rest on a concrete pad that is precast for support. Since the SmartJack has the concrete foundation for itself, there isn’t a chance that it could sink into the ground under the pressure of the house.

In the before picture you can see that the floor joists are being supported by cinderblocks. In the after you can see that the cinderblocks have been replaced by SmartJacks that will help stabilized the home’s floors.

The customer had some major foundation issues that needed work done as soon as possible. You will see in the the pictures just how bad this customer's home was. While we did a lot of work in this home that was not just foundation repair, that part of the job is what will be focused on in this Before and After. In order to correct this major cracking in the foundation, we used several push piers to lift the house into a more level position.

The "before" photo shows the crack before the push piers had been installed. You can see how large this crack is in the foundation of the home. While some small cracks in foundations can (although they should not be) ignored, however this was not the case. Very rarely do foundations get this bad without a major event (i.e. sinkhole, earthquake) happening.

The "after" photo shows the same area after the push piers had been installed. The push piers are able to lift and level out the home. After the leveling is done, our installation specialists go back and fill in the crack, binding the two halves back together.