Gaps between your walls can form when the foundation of your home or business settles into moisture softened soil or inadequately compacted soil beneath the structure. A homeowner who needs to preserve their hard-earned investment may be concerned about this.
If you’ve noticed gaps in certain rooms in the home, it’s time to take action and hire a professional to inspect the situation. These gaps can appear between the walls and the floors and between the walls and the ceiling. These gaps are not only unsightly; they are also indicators of more serious problems within your home or business structure. If the structural instability that creates these gaps is not acknowledged, it will only worsen.
Floor and Wall Gaps Repair Solutions
PUSH PIERS
Push piers are foundation underpinnings used to support and bolster a sinking foundation. To support your foundation, they use the weight of the property and a galvanized steel column that is hydraulically inserted into the earth until it reaches solid bedrock or load-bearing strata. Push piers are a popular floor and wall repair solution, are only suitable for vertical installation and are best suited to heavier qualities that are sinking but have a great foundation.
HELICAL PIERS
Helical piers, like push piers, are foundation underpinnings ways to transmit the weight of a structure from unstable ground to a solid surface used as a floor and wall gap repair solution. They have the appearance of large screws and are appropriate for lighter homes because they do not depend on the weight of the property to set correctly. Helical piers can easily support enormous weight when installed into capable, load-bearing soil underneath the frost line. They can even raise your house to its original height.
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WALL REINFORCEMENT AND ANCHORS
If foundational issues have caused walls to bow, you must address this issue to avoid the gaps from reopening. Carbon fiber wall reinforcement may be sufficient if the bowing is mild or moderate. However, if your walls are severely bowing or leaning, you may need to install wall anchors. Push piers are not suitable for your home if you require wall anchors. This can complicate matters and lengthen the repair process, but it is impossible.
If foundational issues have caused walls to bow, you must address this issue to avoid the gaps from reopening. Carbon fiber wall reinforcement may be sufficient if the bowing is mild or moderate. However, if your walls are severely bowing or leaning, you may need to install wall anchors. Push piers are not suitable for your home if you require wall anchors. This can complicate matters and lengthen the repair process, but it is impossible.
Causes of Floor and Wall Gaps
FOUNDATION SINKING OR DAMAGE
The most severe potential causes of gaps between your walls and floor are structural instability and foundational damage. The settlement, sinking, and other types of damage can also lead to other problems in your home, such as dampness and bowed walls, which will aggravate the gap that exists.
FLOOR JOISTS THAT HAVE ROTTED OR BEEN DAMAGED.
If the joists or rafters in your crawl space are rotten or damaged, they will no longer effectively support your floor. If this occurs, the floorboards will sag and ultimately distort or collapse. According to foundation repair experts, a floor and the wall gap are common signs.
INADEQUATE CRAWL SPACE SUPPORT
If you don’t have enough support columns in your crawl space, your floor will start to look unbalanced or shifted, and it may flex in some places. If this is the situation, one of the many signs could be a gap between your walls and floors. As a result of insufficient support, your walls may start to pull aside from the roof over time.
BENDING WALLS
Bowing and bending walls are intriguing because, even as they can be the main reason for floor and wall gaps, they can also be a symptom of deeper foundational issues. So, while your bowing walls may be contributing to the gaps in the walls and the floor, simply repairing the bowed walls will most likely not solve the problem.
Suppose you observe any buckling in your floor, a tilt or bend in some of your walls, a damp or musty odor, or gaps between your walls and floorboards. In that case, you should call a professional foundation repair specialist, HydroHelp911, immediately.
SOIL EXPANSION
The soil supports your home beneath its foundation. Although the construction contractors should have packed the soil firmly before building your home, the soil may have settled since, or the company may not have filled the soil as firmly as it should have been.
When soil becomes wet from rain, plumbing problems, or groundwater, it expands and combines to form mud. Because there is nowhere else for the wet soil to go, it pushes up. This increases stress on the foundation, pushing the walls in and even causing them to collapse. This creates floor or wall gaps.
SOIL SHRINKAGE
When the soil becomes wet, it exerts pressure on the foundation. However, what happens after it dries? Unfortunately, the repeated procedure of the soil becoming wet and then drying can play a significant role in the imbalanced settling of your home.
Soil shrinks and contracts as it dries. As the water evaporates, the soil beneath your home shrinks and pulls away from the foundation. This creates a space between the soil and the foundation, enabling the house to settle outward. This movement can cause uneven settling and foundation pressure.
FLOOR JOISTS THAT ARE SAGGING
This issue could arise if the construction company who built your home spaced the support pillars beneath it too far apart. Your home requires consistent support throughout the foundation, and uneven spacing of support beams bloats the floor joists, allowing them to bend and sag.
Sagging floor joists may cause squeaking and cracking noises from your floorboards, mainly when you walk around, indicating floor and wall gaps. Sagging floor joists can also lead to a hardwood floor splitting from the baseboard. These issues necessitate immediate action to save the entire house.
Contact a foundation repair expert and inform them of the gap between your floor and wall rather than waiting for the problem to fix itself. This way, you can begin investigating the most cost-effective solutions to help you stay ahead of any substantial damage that may reduce the overall home’s value.
Give us a call at 704-741-9737 for a free foundation inspection.
SHOULD I REPAIR FLOOR AND WALL GAPS NOW?
When first faced with a gap between your floor and your wall, you may be tempted to wait and see whether the problem doesn’t resolve itself. This line of thought is understandable. Gaps between your floor and the wall may not appear to be all that dangerous at first. If you’re concerned about the cost, it might seem more straightforward to ignore the issue while you save up for the repairs.
Waiting to repair a gap between your floor and wall can have serious consequences. The longer you let a problem like this fester, the more likely you will have to deal with more serious damage later on. For example, if you leave a gap between your floor and a wall open during a rainy season, you may end up dealing with an unwanted leak and its associated consequences, in addition to the gap itself. Alternatively, if you discover that you have a pest problem in the area, that gap between your floor and wall may become an unintentional home for a critter that you’d rather have outside.
WHAT HAPPENS IF THE FLOOR AND WALL GAPS ARE NOT REPAIRED QUICKLY?
Many homeowners believe that there is no need to be concerned about floor and wall gaps. This is not true. If you ignore the problem, it can (and will) escalate in various ways. Bowing walls are one of the potential consequences of failing to address this issue.
- Floors have collapsed
- Dampness
- Leaks
- Flooding
- Mold development
- Energy costs have risen
- Infestations of pests
- The ceiling has collapsed
As noticed, the ramifications can be severe. Fortunately, most wall and floor gaps can be repaired quickly, easily, and affordably by foundation repair experts.
