A1 Foundation Crack Repair has a long history of saving homeowners money on foundation repair jobs simply because they are reputable, experienced, and fair, not to mention the 10-year warranty and long track record of outstanding workmanship. In this episode, Adam shares an interesting case study on how A1 saved homeowners in Leominster Massachusetts bigtime on a block foundation repair job.
Narrator: It’s time once again for the “Crack Man Podcast” hosted by A1 Foundation Crack Repair. I’m Darren Kincaid here with the Crack Daddy himself, Adam Tracy. Adam and The Crack Man Rich have over 30 years’ experience in the construction industry. Rich as over two5 years as the president and founder of A1 Foundation Crack Repair. This podcast provides expert basement waterproofing, concrete repair, and preventative maintenance tips for homeowners and businesses. A1 Foundation’s valuable insight will help avert a disastrous flood within the basement, health problems associated with water infiltration, and protect your biggest investment….your home. The topic of today’s podcast: How A1 helped homeowners avoid a massive repair bill on a block foundation job.
Narrator: So, Adam, A1 Foundation Crack Repair has a long history of saving homeowners money on foundation repair jobs simply because you are reputable, experienced, and fair, not to mention the 10 year warranty and a long track record of outstanding workmanship. It sounds like you have another great case study to share today. What happened there?
Adam: This case study came out of a block foundation in Leominster, Massachusetts. It was a young couple, first time homebuyers. They’ve lived in the house for about a year now. Have a young daughter that they brought into the world here, and they're thinking about refinishing the basements and making it a play area or another part of the living space of the house. The challenge is that they both came from California and moved to Massachusetts here where they've never had basements.
They were kind of overwhelmed with the number of things that could happen in a foundation. So, in this case, they had reached out to us to basically ask to do a very large project scale structural work to reinforce the foundation. And in talking with them, I was trying to figure out what was the reason for this. And they had indicated that they had this horizontal crack that went around the foundation on 2 walls and that the walls were bowing inward a little bit. And they were told by other people and other companies that this is the only way to repair this. One of the ways that they got a quote for over $50,000 worth of work was to knock down and replace the wall.
Supporting the house and redoing the entire foundation wall themselves for 2 walls. The other way they actually asked for it and they kind of seem to be going down this path a little bit more, was installing steel I-beams around the foundation for support. Now both techniques, the replacement of the masonry and also the I-beams are a little bit antiquated technologies and replacement and repair techniques that we have for these block foundations.
They're very effective, but they also come at a very high disruption factor, and also, they come at a very high cost because of the amount of work that's involved. Placing I-beams that weigh hundreds of pounds on a concrete footing that holds the wall in there, that's a very expensive and labor-intensive amount of work, especially also, repairing and replacing an entire foundation wall.
In this particular case, we're able to get into the house, look at the foundation, and realize that the bow was while there was a bow in there, it was only about an inch, which again sounds like a lot, but it actually is underneath the tolerance for a lot of other less expensive and also highly effective technologies that we implement on houses all the time.
We were able to size out and install or price out installing structural carbon fiber repairs. And what these are, it's basically a thickness of a sheet of paper that runs from the top of the foundation down towards the floor that gets epoxied as a special technique onto the foundation walls. And that's the equivalent of these steel columns that are going to be placed every so often as well. Now, but the disruption factor is minimal. There's no eyesore of having a large object in the middle of the room, and the pricing is far less than what we would be looking at for a steel beam construction. In fact, it's probably about 25% of the total cost overall.
One thing that we must do as homeowners and researching is that a lot of things that are out there for homes follow a very old school approach. Right? Concrete and masonry are kind of an old technology, and it's in a lot of ways it's in the yesteryear of techniques for repair. So, we really must be aware of, like, there are other things that are out there, that through educational processes, working with structural engineers, working with home inspectors, general contractors. We at A1 can inform people that, hey, there's other things that are out here that are going to cost you way less money.
We work with people to be able to implement these newer technologies and repair technologies that exist out there. They are accepted, they are tested, verified. And they cost a whole lot less money. So just do your research. Talk to lots of companies who do different things because a lot of times you'll find ones that are like us and want to move forward with different times and move forward safer technologies to make sure that homeowners are able to save as much money as possible and then reinvest it in their homes in other ways.
This house was resolved, fixed, ready to go, and back up and running in less than 2 days.
Narrator: Well, thanks, Adam, for sharing this interesting case study on how A1 saved homeowners in Leominster, Massachusetts big time on a block foundation repair job.
Narrator: If you have a basement water problem and think you need a professional, or, if you’d like more information on foundation crack repair and basement waterproofing topics, please visit A1FoundationCrackRepair.com or call (866) 929-3171. Or you can email info@a1foundationcrackrepair.com. Thanks for listening and keep that basement dry.