Deer­field IL 60015: Don’t Ignore Base­ment Foun­da­tion Cracks

Jun 3, 2014 • By Matthew Stock.

Deer­field IL is a small, afflu­ent sub­urb north of Chica­go and is a per­fect illus­tra­tion of a town that grew as it became more accessible.

Orig­i­nal­ly a farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty called Cadwell’s Cor­ner, Deer­field had only a few hun­dred res­i­dents when it was incor­po­rat­ed in 1903 and hadn’t quite reached 500 by 1910. Post­war hous­ing growth led to a pop­u­la­tion of 7,000 by 1957 but, with the open­ing of the Edens Express­way in 1959, the 1960 head count had jumped to 12,000.

Today, 18,000 peo­ple live in Deer­field in 6500 homes, two-thirds of which were built in the boom decades of the Fifties and Six­ties. These and oth­er, new­er homes are prone to main­te­nance and repair prob­lems and many Deer­field home­own­ers are find­ing base­ment foun­da­tion cracks in their houses.

Don’t Ignore Base­ment Foun­da­tion Cracks in a Deer­field Home

When a Deer­field home­own­er finds a crack in the wall of his or her base­ment, it can be clas­si­fied into one of two cat­e­gories: non-struc­tur­al or struc­tur­al.

A non-struc­tur­al crack is nar­row, less than 1÷8”, and is not usu­al­ly found in a dis­cernible pat­tern. These cracks do not threat­en the sta­bil­i­ty of the struc­ture but are the most com­mon source of water in the base­ment.

A struc­tur­al crack, on the oth­er hand, usu­al­ly exceeds 1÷8” in width and is almost always found in a pat­tern. In a poured con­crete wall, there is typ­i­cal­ly a ver­ti­cal crack in the mid­dle with angled cracks across the upper cor­ners. Unseen from inside are ver­ti­cal cracks on each out­er cor­ner where the wall has begun to sep­a­rate from adjoin­ing walls.

In a mason­ry wall, all cracks tend to fol­low mor­tar joints in a stair-step pat­tern and, with struc­tur­al cracks, lead to a bulging or bowed area in the cen­ter of the wall.

Non-struc­tur­al cracks can be repaired by sev­er­al meth­ods. In a poured con­crete wall, the best repair is done by inject­ing the crack with expand­ing polyurethane that fills and seals the it all the way to the out­side. The polyurethane mate­r­i­al remains flex­i­ble when it cures to pre­vent re-crack­ing caused by minor foun­da­tion movement.

If the crack is inac­ces­si­ble from the inside it can be repaired on the exte­ri­or with sodi­um ben­tonite clay. A small diam­e­ter hole is dug next to the foun­da­tion at the site of the crack and filled with the gran­u­lar clay, which absorbs water from the soil to form a pli­able, per­ma­nent water barrier.

In a mason­ry wall, seep­age from cracks can be man­aged by inte­ri­or drain tile or stopped by an exte­ri­or water­proof­ing mem­brane, a thick coat­ing of asphalt-mod­i­fied polyurethane that is trow­eled onto the foun­da­tion wall. If ground water is espe­cial­ly high exte­ri­or drain tile and heavy-duty drainage board can be added.

Struc­tur­al cracks are signs that the foun­da­tion has dropped or that a wall has been pushed inward; either sit­u­a­tion threat­ens to desta­bi­lize the foun­da­tion and the home it sup­ports. The nec­es­sary repair does not involve fix­ing the cracks them­selves but in return­ing a dropped foun­da­tion to lev­el and re-sta­bi­liz­ing it or sta­bi­liz­ing a wall to pre­vent fur­ther inward movement.

When a foun­da­tion has dropped or sunken, the best way to raise and sta­bi­lize it is with hydraulic push piers, set at inter­vals deter­mined by engi­neer­ing data. These piers sit on a load-bear­ing stra­tum and use hydraulics to raise the foun­da­tion and hold it per­ma­nent­ly at its orig­i­nal level.

When walls move or rotate inward, they can be sta­bi­lized by one of two meth­ods. If the wall has moved less than 2”, it can be sta­bi­lized by using indus­tri­al-strength epoxy to attach car­bon fiber strips per­ma­nent­ly to the wall. When more than 2” of move­ment has occurred, steel chan­nel bars are con­nect­ed to the foun­da­tion foot­ings and floor joists above to secure and sta­bi­lize the wall.

A Deer­field home­own­er with one or more cracks in a base­ment wall should have a pro­fes­sion­al assess the prob­lem before it gets worse. At U.S. Water­proof­ing we’re in a unique posi­tion to help regard­less of the nature of the crack because our expe­ri­ence and exper­tise lie in both base­ment water­proof­ing and struc­tur­al foun­da­tion repair. Our experts in each field have already helped thou­sands of home­own­ers, many of them in Deer­field, so why not ask for our free advice?

Tags: basement foundation cracks deerfield, deerfield basement foundation cracks

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