Settling Foundation in Evansville, IN Home Repaired

Challenge

This Evansville, IN home was suffering from a very common problem: a settling foundation.  The homeowners had noticed that the southwestern corner of the home was sloping downward during some interior flooring replacement.  "It's funny, you don't notice something like that when you live in the house everyday.  It's like you're used to walking downhill in some place and you don't think that it's not supposed to do that," one homeowner said.  

The homeowners were aware that the settling foundation needed to be addressed and restored to level condition, but they were concerned because there was sewer access and electrical cables in that area on the exterior of the home.  In addition, the crawlspace was not of a sufficient height to allow for an interior installation.  What were they going to do to fix the foundation?

Solution

The homeowners met with Damon Cheatham, a structural repair specialist at Healthy Spaces, regarding their settling foundation.  Damon performed a full perimeter inspection and determined that the movement was isolated to the southwestern corner of the home.  He recommended that four push piers be installed--3 push piers along the western wall and 1 push pier on the southern wall.  This would allow the installation team to lift the home off of the unstable Active Layer of soil in that area and off-load the home onto the piers.  The team would even be able to restore the lost elevation.  

When it came time to address the challenging installation conditions, Damon recommended that the crew use the "pot hole" method.  The team would hand-dig individual holes for each pier rather than trenching out the entire corner of the home.  This way, the installation team would be able to avoid plumbing and electrical concerns.

The Healthy Spaces installation team, lead by Foreman Daniel Steele, hand dug the four large installation holes on the first day.  The second day consisted of preparing the foundation footer and placing the rugged steel brackets directly under the foundation wall before driving in the sections of push pier with hydraulic pressure.  The team pushed all four piers to resistance depth and were able to recover 2 5/8" of lost elevation for the homeowners.  This returned the corner of the home to level condition.  Then, the team capped the piers, making sure that corner was permenantly stablized.  

The final day on the project consisted of filling the potholes and tamping the soil, then restoring the outside of the home as much as possible.  In this instance, the area surrounding the installation site was covered with mulch, so the entire area was reasonably easy to restore.

Project Summary

Owner: Tim Runyon

Project Manager: Damon Cheatham

Project Foreman: Daniel Steele