Base­ment Water­proof­ing or Foun­da­tion Repair — What Chica­go Home­own­ers Must Know

Dec 2, 2012 • By Matthew Stock.

Struc­tur­al foun­da­tion dam­age is one of the most seri­ous prob­lems that Chica­go home­own­ers can face. It not only leads to water infil­tra­tion but, left unre­paired, can threat­en the very struc­ture and sta­bil­i­ty of the house itself. It’s noth­ing to take lightly.

At the same time, not every crack in a foun­da­tion wall or every instance of seep­age means that foun­da­tion repair is required. Non-struc­tur­al cracks hap­pen all the time and, although they should be repaired to keep the base­ment dry, they can be repaired by crack injec­tion — a basic base­ment water­proof­ing technique.

An expe­ri­enced, well-trained base­ment pro­fes­sion­al should always be able to tell the difference.

How a Chica­go Home­own­er Learned the Dif­fer­ence between Base­ment Water­proof­ing and Foun­da­tion Repair

We don’t often toot our own horn in this blog. After all, it’s here to edu­cate home­own­ers about base­ment water­proof­ing, not adver­tise our com­pa­ny. In this case, though, I want to illus­trate an impor­tant point by describ­ing what one of our advi­sors did to help a Chica­go-area home­own­er under­stand the dif­fer­ence between base­ment water­proof­ing and foun­da­tion repair. In fact, I’ll let the home­own­er tell you him­self, cour­tesy of his review on Angie’s List:

​“Had a bunch of esti­mates because of some crack­ing in the walls. Every­one else told us it was the house sink­ing on one end and we need­ed to put in piers. Chris, how­ev­er, actu­al­ly took the time to mea­sure with a laser and a zip lev­el and not only had the house not sunken where every­one else had said, it wasn’t near­ly as bad as we thought. They rec­om­mend­ed get­ting the water away from the house and hav­ing a land­scap­er regrade the back­yard. (It was pitched slight­ly toward the house.) I appre­ci­at­ed the time and thought­ful­ness with which they diag­nosed the prob­lem. We still may need piers down the line but I’ll be call­ing these guys to give me the real answer for sure.”

In this case, it appears that sev­er­al com­pa­nies took the easy approach for them and the expen­sive approach for the home­own­er. I would like to think that it was lack of train­ing or just miss­ing a few key signs that result­ed in incor­rect­ly rec­om­mend­ing foun­da­tion repair and not some oth­er motive. Regard­less, I am proud of our advi­sor, not only for his pro­fes­sion­al­ism but for hon­or­ing our company’s unof­fi­cial mot­to, ​“Do the Right Thing.”

The moral of this sto­ry, beyond the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom of get­ting a sec­ond opin­ion, is that prob­lems with a home’s foun­da­tion don’t always mean that it’s time to push the ​”Pan­ic” but­ton. Sure, this homeowner’s house could have been sink­ing and putting in piers, or doing some oth­er struc­tur­al reme­di­a­tion, might have been the right thing to do. In this case it wasn’t and a few sim­ple and cost-effec­tive base­ment water­proof­ing tech­niques solved the problem.

Trust your instincts, Mr. or Ms. Chica­go Home­own­er. If some­thing doesn’t seem right about an esti­mate or an opin­ion from a foun­da­tion repair com­pa­ny, or any oth­er ser­vice busi­ness for that mat­ter, get a sec­ond opinion…or a third. At U.S. Water­proof­ing, our advi­sors have been trained to find the real prob­lem and rec­om­mend the best solu­tion, as we have done for more than 300,000 home­own­ers since our found­ing in 1957. Feel free to ask for a no-cost con­sul­ta­tion.

Tags: chicago basement waterproofing, basement waterproofing chicago, angies list, home foundation repair, u.s. waterproofing angies list, structural foundation repair

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