Salem, SC Crawlspace Needed Push Piers and CleanSpace Encapsulation for Outside Cracking and Water Intrusion

Wednesday, October 10th, 2018 by Braden Cook

Challenge

Foundation issues are not picky and can affect just about any home, anywhere. There are certainly some factors that can make a home more succeptible to foundation issues, but for the most part, any home can suffer from them. This homeowner began noticing some cracking on the outside of their home. The cracks appeared in several different area and varied in size, so they knew that this could be a pretty serious issue. They gave us a call and we sent one of our System Design Specialists out to the home to figure out what this home was going to need!

This homeowner had originally called us for the foundation issues, which were pretty obvious when looking at the outside of the home. The first couple of pictures shown on the right show off a few of these cracks. However, this was not the only issue that this homeowner was dealing with. There were also concerns about high moisture levels in the crawlspace that our Specialist noticed while inspecting the foundation. More than likely the cracks in the foundation were caused by settlement of the earth under and around the home. The homeowner wanted to get all of these issues taken care of so they no longer had to worry about them.

Solution

This homeowner decided to have All-Dry of the Carolinas do the work because we were not only able to take care of the foundation settlement, but we also had another great solution to take care of the moisture in the crawlspace. Our System Design Specialist suggested having a total of 12 of our Push Piers installed to take care of the cracking on the outside of the home. As far as the crawlspace waterproofing goes our Specialist suggested going with a full encapsulation. This encapsulation included CleanSpace Liner, drainage matting, 3-inch drain tile, an EverLast Door, SmartSump Pump System, and a SaniDry Sedona dehumidifier.

The next step was for our crew to come out to the home and get this work done for the homeowner. Since there were essentially two different projects that needed to be completed, the crew got hard at work installing the push piers to help lift and stabilize the foundation. This was a very important part of the job, because of how severe some of the cracks in the foundation were. This part of the job actually had some challenges as well. The biggest being that not all of the lifting from the push piers could be done from outside the home. This led to a few of the Push Piers to be installed in the crawlspace. Although different than normal, our production crew did a great job with installing the push piers in the crawlspace, as well as the ones outside the home.

After the foundation settlement issue was taken care of, the crew started working on the encapsulation of the crawlspace. This was a quite large crawlspace, so the crew worked on getting the SmartSump system and the drain tile first. After this was completed the drainage matting was laid out in preparation for the CleanSpace, which came next. The CleanSpace is really the last and most important part because it is what really separates the crawlspace from the outside world. The last thing the crew had to do was to install the SaniDry Sedona dehumidifier. This entire system works together great and now the homeowner no longer has to worry about foundation issues in this area or moisture in their crawlspace.

Project Summary

Installing Contractor: All-Dry of the Carolinas

System Design Specialist: Jonathan Geddie

Project Foreman: Francisco Gamez

Products Installed: CleanSpace Lienr, Drainage Matting, 3-Inch Drain Tile, EverLast Door, SmartSump Pump System, Vent Covers, and a SaniDry Sedona Dehumidifier

Here is a small stair-step crack coming out from the bottom corner of the window. This was one of the many areas around the home that had cracking along the exterior. Fortunately our push piers were able to take care of this issue.

This photo shows off some more cracking around the home. The crack in the lower left corner of the photo was one of the larger cracks around the home.

Here are some of the push piers that were installed in the crawlspace of the home. There were quite a few push piers installed on the inside, but after the foundation had been lifted, they were covered and the CleanSpace was installed.

Here are a few of the push piers that were installed on the outside of the home. The crew must dig all of the way down to the foundation to secure the push pier, this is what can be seen in the photo.

This is what the crawlspace looked like before our crew came in to install the CleanSpace liner. There was quite a bit of insulation that had fallen, which is usually a good sign that a crawlspace has moisture problems.

Here is the final photo of the installed system. The CleanSpace is the white liner that covers the ground and bottom portion of the pillars in the crawlspace. The SaniDry Sedona can also be seen towards the right-hand side of the photo.