We had an interesting case study with a stone foundation crack repair problem in Providence, RI this week. We got called by homeowner who said she was getting water in the corner of her basement foundation which is made out of stone. This is a common problem all over New England.
We looked at the pictures she sent us and the mortar around the stones in the foundation were crumbling or nonexistent, which is fairly normal with these types of foundations. So, we planned to do some re-pointing and we have a process to stop water from coming in the foundation there. But, we couldn't see the wall in the corner of the picture because there were personal items in the way in the picture.
We went out the home, helped her move some things out of the way of the stone foundation and we discovered that on the bottom half of the stone foundation there were roots coming in through it. Those roots pushed the bottom part of the foundation out so it was not as strong as it should have been.
First we had to recommend to her that she get rid of the roots. She had the tree cut down and had the roots ground down. Because the foundation was compromised we had to have an engineer come out and write a plan to submit to the building department.
He recommended that we pour concrete in front of that stone foundation that was compromised and make a steel cage and make the concrete around it, allowing the steel to add additional strength. So that's what we did.
For more information on basement waterproofing, contact A1 Foundation Crack Repair.