All-Dry of the Carolinas Case Studies: Huge Foundation Repair Project on Columbia, SC
Challenge
This is one of the larger foundation repair jobs that we have taken here at All-Dry of the Carolinas, and surprisingly it was not on a commercial project! We had a customer from Columbia, SC come to us in need of some major foundation work on their home. They had several large cracks throughout their home and surrounding structures and walls. While the main job at hand was to fix the foundation and repair the cracks, there was also some waterproofing that needed to be done in their basement. Our System Design Specialist, Jonathan Geddie, went to the home to see exactly what the customer needed in order to fix the problems with their beautiful home! His diagnosis was a doozy! They followed his expert advice and decided to go along with the project. In its entirety, this project took our crew a month to complete! This may seem like a long time, but for the work this home needed, it could have been much worse!
Solution
Jonathan's initial recommendation was to install 9 SmartJacks, almost 40 Push piers, and a ThermalDry Wall System. Most of this first part of the project was for foundation repair. The customer decided to follow Jonathan's advice and went with what he suggested they needed. The SmartJacks are mostly used to fix or prevent sagging floors, which was the case here. The largest and most time consuming part of the job was the installation of the Push piers. Our crew had to excavate around the home (sometimes have to drill through concrete) to get to the foundation. While a few Push piers may be able to be installed a couple days, 38 of them take much, much longer! After the crew installed the Push Piers and essentially releveled the house by using the Push piers to push it back up, they moved on to the second part of the project.
The second part of the project was a much simpler job; waterproofing the basement. This customer had a finished basement, so the job was slightly different than an unfinished basement. At All-Dry we do our very best to leave a customer's home in the same or better way than it was when we arrived! This took a little ingenuity to figure out exactly where we would install the Waterguard drainage system and the sump pumps that will pump out any water that does make its way into the basement. We did this by using some of the nooks and crannies that were built into the home to hide this pumps!
As I said earlier, we always leave the homes we enter in the same or better condition than when we arrived! So after all the work is done, we go back and clean any mess we made up. This includes laying new concrete where any was torn up or removed to install products, replacing any tile or drywall that was removed during the installation of our products!
While this was a huge job, it was not anything that we could not handle! Our Design Specialist Jonathan did an awesome job diagnosing and explaining the problems to the homeowner, as well as suggest the best way to fix the problems, with the correct materials and products! We can't forget our amazing installation crews! On this job, Francisco Gamez was the primary foreman. Francisco has been with All-Dry since 2003 and really knows his way around our products! We hope that every one of our customers are as happy with our work as the customer was!
If you would like to see a few more pictures from this job, click here!
Project Summary
Installing Contractor: All-Dry of the Carolinas
Systems Design Specialist: Jonathan Geddie
Project Foreman: Francisco Gamez
Products Installed: SmartJack, Push Pier, Waterguard XL, SmartSump, TripleSafe Sump Pump
