FAILED FOOTINGS
&
BUCKLEDWALLS
by William Rose
Know thy dirt – lest it spring
any unpleasant surprises
During dry spells, expansive clay soils shrink and pull away from the foundation wall.
Soi1 is the universal building material;
every building has some. Some soil is
good, some is bad. My apologies to
builders who have to blast foundations
out of granite and to those who have to
use houseboat technology for shifting
soils. The emphasis here is on basements
and crawl-space foundations in
dirt.
There are two building problems associated
with soil that are prevalent in
our area (central Illinois) and deserve to
be mentioned: crawl-space additions,
and basement wall buckling.
Crawl-Space Additions
Crawl spaces attached to basement
homes can have a strange but