What Causes Your Floor to Become Uneven?
Solutions for Northwest Arkansas & Fort Smith Homeowners
A gap between the floor and the baseboard, uneven tilting floors, or a bounce as someone walks across the room these are signs of sagging or sloping floors in a home. If you currently have a crawl space, this could mean that what’s under your floor has become uneven or unstable. For most Northwest Arkansas homeowners, the problem is quite common.
Diagnosing Uneven Floor Causes Over Time
Unfortunately, sagging or sloping floors are an issue that most often gets worse over time. It can be a sign of foundation issues within a crawl space. Severe damage to your foundation can develop immediately following construction, or years later as changes occur within the soils surrounding and support your home. Sagging uneven floors aren’t just unsightly – they can pose safety hazards to those living in the house.
Over time, because homes shift and settle based on external factors like temperature and moisture, floor slope may appear to be less bothersome during different times of the year. It’s important to note that the problem isn’t fixing itself, it’s just shifting and can actually appear worse than before a short amount of time later. Additional warning signs that your crawl space is slowly being compromised are sticking windows, drywall cracks around windows and doors, and musty odors that appear infrequently from under your home.
Crawl Space Integrity and Why Foundations Fail
When a crawl space is built, block or brick or even wood – columns are located throughout the crawl space to support the structure’s weight above. Sometimes these columns settle over time, and as they sink, they provide less stable support to a home and the floors above. Other times, the columns may have been placed too far apart, to begin with, and the support beam or girder linking the columns and helping to hold the structure upstarts to sag, causing a ripple effect.
Vesta Foundation Solutions offers a long-term warrantied support solution called SmartJacks, which stabilize without having to rebuild.
Finally, with Northwest Arkansas humidity and severe weather, moisture can sit under your home causing wood rot, mold, and compromise the overall soil integrity over time. It’s important if you have moisture issues to address these as soon as possible, as water intrusion or humidity can further deteriorate a crawl space and your overall foundation and compromise your Indoor Air Quality. Vapor barriers are available through Vesta Foundation Solutions, along with drainage, dehumidifiers and winterization solutions.
These problems with a foundation are best fixed by a contractor who specializes in crawlspaces. Vesta Foundation Solutions has years of experience helping homeowners restore the safety of their homes. We offer exclusive products that can replace the affected columns and beams, causing the issue, permanently stabilizing the home’s foundation. Our lifetime warranty backs our confidence in our work.
The process starts with a FREE no-obligation inspection of the house and a presentation of our findings. To ease worry and redeem peace of mind, schedule your appointment today!