Foundation Repair Before & After Photos

When it comes to chimneys, most people worry about bats or birds moving into them, but our All-Dry of the Carolinas team worry about something else entirely. Once a chimney ages, it will settle according to the foundation of the earth. Gravity takes over and begins to cause damage to the structure. In this case, the chimney had started to tilt away from the home. But with the help of Push Piers our All-Dry of the Carolinas’ team was able to give the chimney the extra strength it needed!

The All-Dry of the Carolinas team are the masters when it comes to lifting up your home, mentally and physically. Whenever you feel like your floors won’t hold you don’t worry, we will be there for you. In this case in Inman, SC the homeowners were having issues in their house in relation to their foundation. The windows would rattle and the hardwood floors were starting to split. In the before picture you can see that the floor joist is being held up by bricks and cinderblocks. This type of solution doesn’t work well with a home since the bricks can sink into the ground leaving the floor with its original problem.

               In the after pictures you can see that a SmartJack has been added to replace the use of the bricks and cinder blocks. This SmartJack crawl space stabilizer is different from the homemade version that was already under the house. SmartJacks are placed on a precast concrete pad that prevents the jack from sinking, hence giving the issue a permeant solution.

There are many different kinds of foundation issues that people can be dealing with. Sometimes several different problems can be affecting a home at the same time. Foundation issues can get complicated sometimes, because there are different products that can be used for different problems. This is why our System Design Specialists are trained to apply the best solution to fix the issues. 

In the case of this home, the walls in their basement were beginning to bow. Fortunately it was very minor and was caught during the System Design Specialist's inspection while he was assessing the water intrusion issue that the homeowner was also dealing with. This is actually relatively common, because people do not always realize the signs of foundation problems (or sometimes water intrusion issues when we go for a foundation estimate). As previously mentioned, the foundation problem was caught before it became a huge deal, which led to the Specialists recommendation.

In order to address the foundation issues that this homeowner was dealing with, the Specialist suggest CarbonArmor strips. These are woven carbon-fiber cloth strips that are extremely strong and are able to keep foundation walls from bowing any further. This was the perfect situation and solution for this homeowner, because the walls had not bowed very much and the CarbonArmor strips are very thin and can easily be painted. This allows a homeowner to easily cover up the strips, while making sure that their walls are secure. 

CarbonArmor Fabric is a product that we don't get to use that often, so when we do get to use it, we like to show it off! CarbonArmor is made up of carbon fibers that are woven together. Many people have heard of carbon-fiber before, but don't always know what it is or what it can do. Carbon fiber is an excellent product to use (especially for a job like this) because its immense strength but also because of its weight, or lack of it. Carbon fiber is 10 times as strong as steel, however, it is 5 times lighter.

The "before" photo shows what the basement looked like before the CarbonArmor Fabric was installed. While you are not able to see any visible bowing on this particular wall, you can see some stair-step cracks on the back wall. These cracks are almost always a sign of bowing walls or another type of foundation issue.

The "after" photo shows off the installed product, CarbonArmor Fabric. As you can see, there are four strips in this small section of the basement, over twenty were installed in total. While there is not that much of a visual difference between these two pictures, just having these 4 small strips will do this homeowner a world of good. Let's not forget about what was mentioned earlier, carbon fiber is 10 times stronger than steel. Would you rather have a small strip of carbon fiber or a steel beam that is much weaker?

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.