The foundations are the most critical part of any building and also one of the most ignored when it comes to regular servicing. If you consider just how often your windows are cleaned, your wall is repainted and even how much more often you check your roofing materials, the foundations of your building are criminally neglected. You may have even noticed the symptoms of shifting foundations without connecting the dots, so here are a few warning signs to look out for and what you can do about them to protect your business from ruin.
Warning Signs
Most properties have some form of underpinning that serves as the main part of your building's foundations. These are simply a collection of strong pillars or posts that connect the frame of your house to a concrete slab or individual piers. When these underpinnings start to fail, they make the floor above them uneven, which is how most of the early warning signs present themselves. Cracking walls, doors that don't fit into the frame anymore and even windows getting jammed are all signs that your flooring is unstable. Sometimes you may even be able to feel the indent in the floor where the underpinning is breaking down.
The Solution
Underpinning services need to be called as soon as possible when you begin to notice these warning signs if you want to stop any further decay. Once one area of your home becomes unstable it can quickly have a domino effect. Underpinning services include everything from stabilising your foundations to replacing the problematic areas with stronger concrete or metal varieties. In past decades wooden posts were frequently used, and many of the current homes with problematic underpinnings are those same wooden ones which have started to rot.
Continued Maintenance
Apart from upgrading your wooden underpinning to more modern materials, underpinning services can also advise you on other avenues you can take to shore up your foundations in the long-run. Sometimes it can be wise to add in more posts than you currently have (especially for commercial properties) while other times you may need to address environmental factors like unstable or wet earth. If the problem with your underpinning isn't the wooden posts rotting, then generally it is the earth itself shifting over time and causing holes that the pillars sink into. Whatever the case, it is important your foundations are monitored so that the repairs are effective for decades to come.
For more information, reach out to an underpinning service in your area.
