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
