Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Metro Area

While the soil around Scranton and Wilkes-Barre is fairly stable and has good drainage capabilities, exceedingly high levels of saturation, heavy rainfall, and flooding have the capability to cause movement in the soil. In fact, they can even wash the soil away and lead to craters and mounds forming where the ground was previously flat. This is a process known as soil washout, and it has serious implications for any home.

Unlike its wind-based cousin, erosion, soil washout can take place above and below the ground. This makes it a far more potent and unpredictable process that can undermine the foundation of any property when given the time and opportunity. As such, it is important to know the signs of soil washout so that you can act quickly to protect your home. If you ignore the signs, then you could end up facing issues far more serious than a few sunken slabs. In fact, washouts can even cause large sinkholes in serious cases!

The most obvious sign of soil washout, of course, is the presence of soil deposits on your exterior concrete surfaces after heavy rainfall or periods of flooding. Likewise, the presence of craters and mounds in your yard are telling and indicate that the soil is unstable in some way. Finally, you can look for exposed sections of foundation and gaps beneath the edges of exterior concrete slabs and surfaces. These are all early signs of washout that can help you to act before damage takes root!

Foundation damage is one of the most serious issues that can affect any property. Damage to a property’s foundation will grow at an exponential rate and has the capacity to undermine every other part of the home. As such, it is incredibly important to act decisively when you see signs of foundation damage (for example, cracking, dampness, pooling water, and unevenness in your floors or walls). There are homeowners who prefer to wait until a problem has become impossible to ignore before acting, but this is a bad idea when it comes to foundation issues.

The dangers of waiting until foundation damage spreads are many, but the most obvious and worrisome is the likelihood that the problem will become more severe if left unattended. Structural problems, in general, are unlikely to become stable without intervention, but foundation damage almost always grows at an exponential rate until professional intervention deals with the underlying issues. Secondly, there is a very high risk of foundation damage causing secondary or tertiary issues to form within your home. So, to put it simply, waiting will make repairs more time-consuming, more costly, and far more complex.

The benefits of acting quickly, as you might imagine, are a reduction in the cost of repairs, a smoother and simpler process, and the prevention of avoidable damage to your home. There is another benefit, however, and that is the maintenance of a generally healthier and more comfortable environment inside your home. This means there will be less chance of cosmetic damage, mold formation, and your energy efficiency levels should stay relatively high (unless your appliances are very old or in need of repair).

SettleStop PolyRenewal™ foam injection is one of the most effective and widely used concrete lifting and stabilization products on the market today and for good reason! When compared to older, more traditional repair methods like mudjacking, polyurethane foam is less messy, easier to install, less likely to overburden already weak soil, and cures far more quickly than the slurry used in mudjacking. This makes it a very effective and stable solution – that is, when installed by a skilled professional.

SettleStop PolyRenewal™ polyurethane foam can be used in two main ways. Firstly, it can be used alone to lift and secure individual concrete slabs or small structures and surfaces. Secondly, it can be used in conjunction with more robust measures, like slab piers, in order to provide extra support and fill voids that have been left under previously sunken structures and surfaces. This makes SettleStop PolyRenewal™ a highly versatile and adaptable solution.

Whichever capacity it is being used in, SettleStop PolyRenewal™ has a relatively straightforward installation process. First, holes are drilled into the damaged surface so that injection ports can be installed. After this, the two-part foam will be mixed to give the right level of expansion and force. Once it is injected into the void under the sunken or damaged surface, the process of lifting will be carefully monitored to ensure that the slab or surface is raised to its original position (no higher). Once this has been done, the injection ports will be removed, and the foam will be allowed to set. This process should leave no immediately noticeable trace once the injection sites have been cleaned and tidied.

In truth, helical piers and push piers are much the same in terms of their effectiveness and the results that they offer. Both forms of foundation piers undertake the same work using the same principles. Where they differ, however, is in their deployment. Each form of foundation pier is best suited to a different kind of soil and property. Ensuring that you have the right type of foundation pier for your home is key to getting the best results.

Push piers, sometimes also called resistance piers, are long, straight foundation piers made up of hollow steel beams. As the name suggests, they are pushed into the ground to seek load-bearing soil below the frost line and will use this to support the weight of your property. They work best in heavier homes and cannot be used if a property’s foundation footing is fragmented. Likewise, they cannot be installed at an angle and must be perfectly straight.

Helical piers, by contrast, are essentially screwed into the ground and use the torque produced by this process to bite into the soil in a way that allows them to support a property and spread its weight. These piers are best for light properties and structures that have fragmented foundation footings. They can also be installed at an angle. Installation of either pier is a specialist task, however, so you should always work with professionals when considering either form of foundation pier to make sure that you get the right solution for your home.

The basement is one of the most vulnerable parts of any home for a number of reasons, and your basement walls, in particular, are subject to a level of pressure that others are not: hydrostatic pressure. Hydrostatic pressure, to put it simply, is the pressure exerted by the weight of the soil around your home (as well as the water that it contains), and it is one of the most common causes of bowing basement walls.

Most basement walls are made of concrete block or poured concrete. These materials are wonderfully strong and have an incredibly load-bearing capacity. However, their tensile strength is a fraction of their compressive strength. To put it simply, these materials cannot stretch or bend, and as hydrostatic pressure exerts force laterally, they are very vulnerable to damage when it rises beyond a certain level. Many things can cause a rise in the level of hydrostatic pressure around a home, including plumbing floods, heavy rain, and drainage malfunctions.

Of course, hydrostatic pressure is not the only potential cause of bowing walls in a basement. Structural damage such as foundation settlement or subsidence can also lead to bowing walls by causing the weight of your property to be unevenly distributed. Likewise, there is a chance that defects in the design of your property or the materials used to make your basement walls will cause them to be weak and lead to damage like cracking, buckling, and bowing. Whatever the cause, of course, this is a serious issue that you should not ignore. Allowing a bowing wall to grow unchecked could lead to dampness and humidity, mold formation, and, in serious cases, the collapse of the wall in question.

While this is a simple question, the answer can be complex. To keep it short and sweet: most forms of mold are benign, if not exactly healthy to have in your home, but a small number of mold species are toxic. Identifying those types of molds that are actively dangerous can be difficult, however, because mold and fungal growths come in thousands of species. The fungal growths that occur as a result of wood rot, for example, can look similar to white forms of mold but are generally not harmful to humans unless ingested (though they will wreak havoc on your home).

The type of mold that you should be most worried about, however, is black mold. Black mold is highly toxic to humans and animals; it can cause serious side effects even when the level of exposure is small. Black mold can cause side effects such as rashes, skin irritation, infections, dizziness, breathlessness, respiratory issues, and, in some very serious cases, seizures. More serious side effects are rare, of course, and tend to only occur after prolonged exposure… unless there are underlying issues.

As is so often the case, those who are already vulnerable are at the most risk from exposure to any kind of mold but particularly when exposed to black mold in any serious or prolonged capacity. Those most at risk are the elderly, very young children, those who have underlying respiratory issues such as asthma, bronchitis, or emphysema, and those who have impaired immune systems. While exposure to black mold can be unpleasant and debilitating for anyone in large doses, even a small amount of exposure can be lethal to people who have underlying conditions. That makes it necessary to seek out waterproofing measures that can protect your home from falling victim to this kind of infestation.