Factors to Know about How Frost can Affect Foundation

 

The freezing temperature during the winter months can wreak havoc for home and business owners. It's easy for you to focus on wintertime issues like high electric costs and broken plumbing while ignoring other zones. However, the freezing cycle can also create another problem to develop after the cold weather. It is common, and consequently, it becomes a significant foundation problem. 

Understand what frost heaving is and how it reduces some effects in the future. In addition to saving hundreds or thousands of dollars, hire the professionals who provide the best solution for your foundation repair.

What is glaze heaving, and why is it problematic?

The frost heaving is the upward swelling of solid due to icy conditions. As a result, it puts pressure on a building's concrete slab. Over time, repeat pressure from frost heaving makes foundation issues for homes and businesses. So, understand the causes first, which help prevent your Foundation; read here for a closer look!

How Frost heave damages Foundation

For the Foundation, the weather has a significant effect. The weather condition that can adversely affect the Foundation of your house is frost heave. Whatever conditions occur in colder areas, the frost heave consists of the ice forming underneath the soil. Therefore, the soil of your Foundation alternates between freezing and thawing. 

As a result, movement occurs, leading to structural damage to your Foundation. However, its movement process lifts dirt, tree roots, plants, and the other materials of the earth to the ground. And then it puts pressure on your Foundation or can be the reason for damage.

Repeated freeze cycles make the situation worse

When the temperature fluctuates, frost heaving can become more problematic. When the temperature increases above freezing, the ground ice liquefies and leaves gaps in the soil below your Foundation.

When the things freeze again, increasing the moisture in the soil leads to an even greater volume of ice. This is because the motion of the upward earth heaving the Frost becomes more pronounced.

On the other hand, the cycle can occur repeatedly, and it damages your Foundation more and more. So, heaving Frost is bad for structural integrity. However, in this situation, hire the best professional foundation repairer who offers Downspout Leader Installation for your home and business.

What factors of heaving frost more affect a foundation?

Most of the problems can occur because of frost heaving. However, specific criteria make it more likely, affect your home and building.

The cold temperature

When the temperatures are low, the top layers of the soil freeze begin the process of frost heaving.

The moisture and humidity

If a high percentage of moisture is present in the earth below the Foundation, soil expansion is also more likely to occur.

Freezing ground

When the ground freezes, the frozen area of the ground becomes much more complex than the unfrozen area. Then it locks the Foundation in place. If the ground continues to freeze, the process of freezing progresses downwards, causing the below soil to lift the top layers. It also pulls the Foundation up, creates the gap, and opens the spaces. So, the unfrozen area under the foundation freezes.

When the weather warms up, the Foundation comes back down. Because the space under the Foundation is partially filled and goes back down to its original position.

Leaks and seepage

After some time, when the weather warms up, the snow will start melting and seep right into the soil around the Foundation. The soil will be saturated, and the excess water will find the Foundation by cracks, doors, and windows. However, the flooding, moisture, and musty water get into your house with all signs.

What can you do to prevent frost heaving?

The winter weather and freezy temperatures can unstable your Foundation and create structural problems. First, fix the cracks quickly to avoid structural issues by insulating your house correctly. Moreover, maintaining gutters and repairing the gap in the Foundation indeed prevent water infiltration.

 

The cracks could be the secondary foundation issues, but the unstable soil is the worse. To replace it with such an extremely clean mixture of gravel and sand, you can also apply polymer injections into the ground.

On the other hand, water management is the key to the Foundation's health. First, move to downspout water away from the Foundation by using underground downspout extensions. Moreover, installing the drainage system can also be helpful to push water to a better location. Install the grate drain, which cleans debris and removes water from the affected area.

Get peace of your mind for your Foundation

Despite constantly changing the weather conditions, your house's Foundation can stay secure with the perfect prevention measures. Hire the best house foundation repair, which provides the best security service. Contact Guardian Foundation Repair, who assess your property, and according to that, they will give the solution which will keep your house safe and structurally best.