Your home is in many ways the centerpiece of your life. It’s where you go to relax, where you sleep, where you have all your personal possessions, and where you raise a family.
While it would be ideal for your home to remain completely safe and intact, the reality is that potential threats are always looming, with problems related to your building’s foundation being a possible issue.
An incorrectly laid foundation can lead to a whole host of structural weaknesses that can compromise the safety and livability of your home.
If you suspect your home’s foundation wasn’t constructed properly, here are some signs to look for.
The Foundation Begins to Sink
A fairly obvious sign a foundation isn’t functioning properly is that the building resting on top of it begins to sink into the ground.
When foundations are constructed, they’re supposed to take into account several considerations, such as differences in soil type, moisture, and elevation. When mistakes are made or builders get careless, the result can often be the construction of a “one size fits all” foundation that isn’t properly suited for a particular environment.
Once a foundation is incorrectly constructed, it often causes either the center of the floor to start caving in or for one side of the house to start sinking while the other sides remain relatively stationary.
Ceilings Begin to Warp
When a foundation is made correctly, it provides the necessary structure for a building to stand upright, with all its component parts aligning with each other in more or less straight lines.
When this condition isn’t met, however, the result can be disastrous. One way this manifests is in warped ceilings. As the sides of buildings begin to bend and misalign due to structural weaknesses, it places stress on the ceilings of the building, which rely on walls for support, resulting in warping, bending, and crack formation.
Wooden Structural Parts Begin to Rot
Foundations aren’t just useful for providing support for a building’s construction, they’re also a very important part of environmental control.
Specifically, well-laid foundations create a seal or barrier that controls the damaging effects of excess moisture. If the ground around a building holds a considerable amount of moisture and manages to find its way through weaknesses in the foundation, that can result in the wooden components in the house beginning to rot.
If wooden beams or similar structures in your house are starting to decay, a poorly designed foundation could be to blame.
Doors And Windows Begin to Twist
A fairly common and easy-to-spot telltale indication is when doors and windows begging to twist or become lopsided for seemingly no reason.
Door and window frames need to be level in order to be structurally sound. Once a foundation begins to sink in certain spots, that ultimately causes stress to be placed on pretty much all other sections of the house, even if it’s not immediately obvious.
This stress can disrupt the structure of window and door frames, leading to bends, breaks, and twisting that not only is unsightly but can also cause doors to no longer close properly or for windows to start cracking.
The Ground Becomes Lopsided
While most signs of a bad foundation manifest themselves within the interior of a house, it’s entirely possible for a foundation to negatively impact the environment surrounding a building.
Depending on a variety of factors, like density, the way a foundation interacts with the adjacent soil can cause a substantial amount of uprooting that can make previously level ground begin to slope downward or push upward.
Getting Your Foundation Fixed
Having a well-constructed and well-maintained foundation is an integral part of owning a home and is not only vitally important for ensuring a house’s longevity, but can also have very significant effects on the physical appearance of the surrounding land. When it comes to finding early foundation issues it’s a good idea to hire a professional in your area to inspect your home. For example, if you live in Texas you might search for a company that finds early signs of foundation problems in Carrollton Texas. If you see any signs that your home’s foundation is structurally compromised, then don’t hesitate to get it checked out by a professional service; not doing so could spell disaster in the long run.
