In our last podcast, Adam shared a story about ants pouring out of a basement wall crack. Creepy, right? What other kinds of things does A1 Foundation Crack Repair see growing out of old wall cracks? Adam shares a funny story from Dedham MA.
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: What kinds of interesting things grow in basement wall cracks? So, Adam, in our last podcast, you talked about ants pouring out of a basement wall crack. Creepy. Right? So what other kinds of things do you see growing out of old wall cracks?
Narrator: So, Adam, tell us about it.
Adam: Yeah. Apparently, we're entering a series of oddities, basement curiosities here. And it's not uncommon to see some vines and some roots growing through older foundations, especially with fieldstone foundations. A lot of them will have these root structures that find their way in between stones. And every once in a while, we'll actually get foundation cracks that you can see small little plants or whatnot growing out of them.
We had this house a couple days ago in Dedham, Massachusetts, and it was a very old concrete foundation, something in probably the late twenties, early thirties, which is pretty early generation concrete for residential construction. And this foundation was very porous, and it was very damp and moist down there. In fact, it was so damp that there was literally a mushroom growing out and off of the wall right out of a foundation crack.
In order to have a mushroom growing there, you know that it's a humid environment. So not only were we there to repair other foundation issues there, but we had to do a little bit of removal of some fungi out of the walls there. But this goes to show you that if you kind of leave these things untreated, even if water's not actively coming through, the foundation crack is exposed to the soil on the other side. And things can, like the ants from the last podcast, in this case, plant growth can occur through there. And obviously, that's not something that most people want in their basements or in their homes unless they're in a nice potted area, but not growing off of the wall.
It was simple to repair, obviously simple to remove, and in reality has no real harm by itself, but it's more of an indicator of how deteriorated the wall was and also how moist the environment was there. So, with all the work that these people did in Dedham, we were able to tighten up there, get the humidity levels down, and make them have a much more comfortable basement space, free of mushrooms growing off the wall.
Narrator: Thanks, Adam, for sharing this interesting case study of a mushroom growing out of a basement wall crack.
Narrator: If you have a basement water problem and think you need a crack repair professional near Hartford, CT, or, if you’d like more information on foundation crack repair and basement waterproofing topics, please visit A1FoundationCrackRepair.com or call Rich at (866) 92 9-3171. Or you can email Rich at info@a1foundationcrackrepair.com. Thanks for listening and keep that basement dry.