Sagging, sloping floors are a sign of crawl space failure.
Over the last few years, we have witnessed many crawl spaces with unstable shoring under the floor. Much of it was never properly designed or installed. Many homes have drooping or sagging floor as a result of the inadequate shores. Ultimately, the walls supported by these elements start to crack, doors become out of square and similar distresses manifest themselves.
Many times, the crawl space jack failure gives signs of stress with gaps under interior walls.
The symptoms look like the above pics. The floors sag, gaps appear at the base boards, doors become out of square and difficult to operate and sometimes they appear wavy and interior walls cracking and distress.These failures are caused by a variety of things. Examples include:
- Failure of the soils to support the footings
- Improper footings, not to proper depth or size or improper materials
- The vertical supports are not sufficient, or out of alignment
- Horizontal supports are not sufficient to span between vertical supports
- Connection hardware/brackets is inadequate or nonexistent.
We have installed smart jacks under many homes in the last few years. More than all of our competitors in Arizona combined. Because of the space requirements we have up until now been unable to install piers under our smart jacks cost effectively. Putting helical piles or push piles in is very difficult without removing the floor above to access. What we have done is dig down pour concrete footings and install our smart jacks on top the footing. This a difficult process that relies on the surface soils for bearing capacity. Without having specific soil data, this is difficult to be confident in.
Stay tuned for the next blog to discuss a unique solution we offer for this!
