Harrisburg, PA

Yes! Perimeter drainage is incredibly important to the health of any property for a number of reasons. Firstly, preventing water from pooling around your property is absolutely key to maintaining the stability of your property and foundation. Secondly, preventing perimeter saturation is crucial to avoiding damage to your structure as a result of flooding and dampness. Finally, good perimeter drainage is absolutely key to maintaining the health of your yard.

This has a lot to do with the way that the chalky, limestone soil around Harrisburg adheres to itself. These kinds of soils have good natural drainage capabilities, but they can be quite loose. When the area experiences flooding or soil saturation, this can cause a lot of movement and, in turn, damage to your home. Perimeter saturation and flooding can cause many issues including, but not limited to, lateral movement, spreading cracks, sinking, and bowing walls.

Having good perimeter drainage options in place is absolutely key, therefore, because it prevents soil saturation and movement. By maintaining a level of stability in the soil and preventing total saturation, perimeter drains will prevent huge amounts of avoidable damage to your property with very little need for your input. In fact, short of yearly maintenance and checks, perimeter drains are consistent and reliable ways to protect your home from all kinds of damage.

In the simplest possible terms, hydrostatic pressure is pressure or weight exerted on the structure of your property by the soil around it. This weight can increase or decrease based on the amount of water in the soil and, as such, is impacted by the weather, snowmelt, and even underground water sources. In fact, a plumbing flood could also contribute to the levels of hydrostatic pressure around your property, especially if it is serious or prolonged.

All properties have to deal with some level of hydrostatic pressure, of course, and they are designed to withstand it to a certain extent. The real troubles begin when the level of hydrostatic pressure around your home exceeds its ability to withstand it. When this happens, damage is sure to be the result. Spreading cracks, fragmentation, and bowing walls are just some of the issues that can come about as a result of hydrostatic pressure.

Ensuring that your property has good drainage options in place is one of the best things that you can do to prevent hydrostatic pressure from reaching untenable levels around your property. This means making sure that your gutters are clear, that you have adequate ground level drainage, and that the interior of your property is protected from water. Preparing your yard via grading and proper planting can also be of great help when it comes to managing moisture in the soil effectively.

Many properties that were built between the 1950s and the 1990s that have crawl spaces were originally constructed with crawl space vents. These vents were originally installed because they were believed to reduce the chances of dampness and humidity by increasing airflow inside the crawl space (and the property as a whole). Ultimately, this turned out to be true, of course, but unfortunately, the consequences of this ventilation are negative rather than positive. As such, it is no longer best practice to install vents into newly built homes; in fact, it would be considered a mistake.

You see, the presence of crawl space vents creates a channel of airflow from the bottom of the house to the top. Often called the stack effect or the chimney effect, this channel of air upsets the interior climate of a property in a lot of ways and can have many different consequences for both the structure of the property and the health of those who live in it. The stack effect can cause dampness, allow mold formation, lead to fluctuating temperatures, and allow wood rot to flourish (among other things). Each of these issues, in turn, can lead to a number of secondary and tertiary issues.

Thankfully, you do not need to remove crawl space vents to protect your home. These days, it is easy to get well-fitting, durable, weather and waterproof vent covers and doors that will prevent water, dirt and debris from getting into your home, as well as cutting off the airflow needed to create the stack effect in your house. Fitting these covers is relatively straightforward but should be done in conjunction with other waterproofing measures if you intend to get the most out of them. Simply installing vent covers without dealing with any issues inside your property will only serve to trap the moisture in and lead to bigger issues in the long-term.

Dampness is a hugely destructive condition that can be a warning sign of many issues and that will lead to many different problems in your home if it is allowed to go unchecked. The potential causes of dampness include, but are not limited to foundation damage, open crawl space vents, damaged or broken appliances, leaking or burst pipes, and damaged or leaking basement window wells. Whatever the causes of dampness, however, the signs of it are varied.

The most common signs of dampness are increased relative humidity and condensation. However, you may also notice issues like staining, musty odors, mold formation, rotting wood, sagging floors, and even increasing energy bills as your HVAC system struggles to process the humid air in your home. This can lead to increased wear and tear and even increase the frequency of breakdowns in your HVAC system. This, in turn, can have an impact on your health. That’s especially true in winter, when the temperatures can really plummet and a heating breakdown could be lethal to those who are already vulnerable.

If you see these signs, then you should act quickly because the side effects of dampness, as well as many of the underlying causes, can snowball with frightening speed. If you do not act quickly, then you could well find that the consequences make themselves known in every area of your home. What’s more, the cost of repair is only likely to go up the longer you wait. This is because of the likelihood of complexities forming. Dealing with dampness will mean dealing with the underlying cause of the moisture before dehumidifying and draining the property in question. Only then will professionals be able to work on preventing the recurrence of dampness.

No. However, while mold is not always dangerous to your health and wellbeing, it is always a sign that things are not right in your home. Mold is primarily a warning sign for dampness and humidity in a property. These issues are serious problems in their own right, of course, which is why you should never ignore mold and mildew when you see them. In a broad sense, mold is just a fungal growth which means that you should also consider the presence of mold as a warning sign for wood rot. Wood rot and mold are both dangerous in completely different ways.

Mold is primarily a risk to your health and wellbeing, but it is not generally a danger to the structure of a property. Mold can come in many forms and can be pink, green, gray, white, brown, or black in color. It is black mold that is the most concerning in terms of health repercussions. The most common side effects of prolonged exposure to black mold include headaches and dizziness, migraines, seizures, breathlessness, infection, skin irritation, and respiratory problems. For those who already have underlying health conditions, exposure could be lethal.

Wood rot fungus, by contrast, is generally harmless to people (unless ingested). The real problem with wood rot fungus is the way it destabilizes and damages the structure of the property it takes root in. This is because the fungi that cause wood rot consume wood. In nature, this is a part of the decaying process, but for your home, it is a real and worrying issue that can cause localized and widespread collapse in your property. This can be just as dangerous to your health and wellbeing as prolonged exposure to mold, albeit in a different way. So, while mold and fungal growth in your property is not always dangerous in a direct sense, it can be dangerous in many indirect ways.

If you have noticed sagging in your property’s flooring, then there are a number of potential issues that could be at work. However, you can break down the causes of a sagging floor into two main categories: issues with the flooring or issues with its support system. This can mean faults and flaws in the wooden floorboards, in the joists that support them, or in the wider structure of your property. For example, a damaged foundation or leaning walls can undermine the stability of your flooring and lead to it sagging, bending, cracking or even collapsing. After all, while wood has relatively high tensile strength, it will only bend so far before it breaks.

Of course, the best thing you can do is maintain your property well in order to avoid this kind of issue. However, there are cases where it could be unavoidable. In these situations, it is best to know how to spot the signs of damage when they first begin to appear. When you know what the signs of damage to your property’s structure and flooring are, there is a much higher chance that you will be able to catch the issues before they get out of control. Things like structural damage and joist over span are generally connected to a range of problem signs like changes to the texture of wood, springy flooring, spreading cracks, gaps between flooring and walls, dampness, bad odors, mold formations, humidity, and, of course, visible unevenness.

Thankfully, there are many different repair options for uneven and sagging floors these days. Here at Baker’s Waterproofing, we favor crawl space support jacks for their versatility and flexibility. These are easy to tailor solutions that can be changed to fit almost any space. As long as the floorboards themselves are healthy, crawl space support jacks will lift them back into place and provide the required support to prevent them from sagging and deviating once more. These provide a long-term solution to sagging flooring and, better still, restore the safety of your property with minimal disruption and excavation inside your home.