The foundation of your home is hugely important, there is simply no doubting this fact. After all, foundation problems can lead to extensive problems with the rest of your home, and should be headed off as soon as they are noticed. Fortunately, foundation repair services are possible, and residential foundation repair services are likely available in your area. Hiring professionals to conduct foundation repair is an absolute must here in the United States, as this will ensure not only the safety of your home during the process of foundation repair, but will help to avoid full fledged foundation failure, which would require, as one might guess, much more intensive work to fully fix – and would therefore be much more expensive as well.
Fortunately, there are a number of steps that can be taken to keep your foundation in good shape and to avoid the need for foundation repair entirely – or at least for a good period of time. Of course, this is something that will be ideal to the vast majority of home owners. Though it might involve some extra precautions and time spent, it will be more than worth it at the end of the day as foundation repair services, though often incredibly necessary, are often quite far from being inexpensive and easily affordable for the typical family here in the United States.
Some of the steps that can be taken to prevent damage to the typical foundation at the typical home – or even at the typical place of business – are relatively simple. For instance, preventing flooding damage will be a must in order to prevent foundational damage. One way to do this is to implement drainage solutions around the home. These drainage solutions can be implemented in many different ways, but the importance of drainage solutions is not one to be underestimated. In addition to this, different homes will need different types of drainage solutions, and using the right drainage solutions can have a considerable impact on the quality of the foundation. In places where damp is common, such as in locations of this country where there is a good deal of rain or even of snow (or both, as is often the case in places with multiple climates), drainage solutions will become even more important than ever, even more so than homes in drier climates.
How you landscape your home can also impact your foundation. It’s important to not plant things like trees, which will develop extensive root systems, too close to your foundation, as these roots can end up disrupting the foundation and necessitating the removal of the tree, ending up in more labor and more wasted money than what would have been if the tree had been planted further away. Consulting with landscaping professionals can help in these regards.
Making sure not to extensively water too close to your home is something that you can also do. Ideally, any soakers that are in use will be kept at least 12 inches – an entire foot – from the foundation of your home. In some cases, it will be even better to keep these soakers as many as 18 total inches away from the foundation of your home or commercial building (depending on the situation, of course). After all, it is far better to be safe than to be sorry when it comes to the care and keeping of your foundation here in the United States.
Having an expert soil analysis conducted before a foundation is ever even laid can be hugely helpful as well. For instance, some types of foundation can have high qualities of clay, for which slab like foundations are necessary. This is the case in much of Texas, a state that has up to 60 types of soil throughout it, if not even more than that. This is the reason that nearly every new home – at least, every home that has been built within the last 50 years or so, whether you’d consider that new or not – has a slab foundation of some sort in order to prevent foundational issues.