Floor Crack
Causes & repair solutions for cracked, sinking concrete floors
Do you have a concrete slab floor that is showing signs of sinking, sagging, or settling? Are the walls separating from the floor below or ceiling above?
If you have a problem like this in your home, you could have a sinking or settling concrete floor slab. This problem can lead to cracks in floors and walls, uneven surfaces, and a weakened foundation.
Signs Of Slab Settlement
When a floor slab settles, the damage can manifest itself in many ways. Along with cracks in the concrete, the floors can separate from the walls as they sink downwards. Alternatively, the interior wall may be pulled down with the floor, instead of separating from the ceiling. Walls can also pull away from other walls, and interior wall cracks can form — commonly off the corners of interior doors.
What Causes A Concrete Floor Slab To Settle?
When a concrete floor settles, it can mean serious damage to your home. The causes of floor slab settlement are almost always due to the soils underneath being unable to support the weight of the concrete. They often accompany other foundation problems in your home.
Installing The Supportworks Slab Pier System
Supportworks Slab Pier System stabilizes the concrete floor slab in your home. It provides the best opportunity to relevel the floor and lift non-load bearing partition walls that may have settled along with the slab. To install our system, our contractor will take these six steps:
1. Preparing for Installation
Before the installation day, a representative from our company will have already inspected your foundation issue. At that time, a foundation repair proposal was put in writing.
Your foundation repair experts will use that proposal to map out the locations where the slab piers will be installed. At the beginning of each slab pier installation, a small hole is cored through your concrete slab floor. This hole will create an access point for the slab piers that are about to be installed.
2. Position Slab Bracket
To give the slab pier something to “lift,” a slab bracket is positioned beneath the concrete slab.
The Supportworks Slab Pier System uses a three-piece slab bracket that is assembled underneath your concrete floor, allowing for a much smaller hole to be cored in your concrete slab. Additionally, this larger bracket reaches across more area along your floor, creating a more even distribution of weight.
3. Install Steel Tubes
Steel tubes are hydraulically driven down through the bracket to the competent soils beneath.
These steel tubes are the real strength of the foundation pier system — and are responsible for transferring the home weight to strong supporting soils. To prevent corrosion, Baird Foundation Repair has slab piers available that are designed using galvanized steel. This ensures the quality and long-lasting strength of your slab pier system.
4. Transfer Slab Weight To Soil
The weight of the concrete slab is transferred through the piers to the load-bearing strata underneath your home.
As the system lifts your concrete slab floor upwards, the sinking movement of your floor will be permanently halted. Often, it will also be possible to lift the concrete slab back to a level position.
5. Inject Grout Fill
Once the concrete slab has been lifted, a void will be present underneath the removed floor.
Additionally, if your floor had been sinking because of compacted soil or washout, a gap existed even before the installation. To address this, we carefully pump grout under the slab to fill in all empty spaces.
6. The Cleanup
At Baird Foundation Repair, we take pride in leaving your home looking clean and neat. Once the installation is completed, we repair all cored holes with concrete, making your final installation virtually invisible.
Any debris generated during the installation is cleaned up and removed by us. And once we’re done, you can rest easy knowing that you have a 25-year warranty on manufacturer’s defects, as well as a performance warranty from us.
Looking For Foundation Slab Repair Contractors In Texas?
At Baird Foundation Repair, we provide proven solutions for concrete slab floor leveling — as well as other foundation repair solutions — to homeowners throughout Texas. We provide each of our customers with a free, no-obligation slab repair quote, in writing, before any work is done. To schedule your appointment, call or e-mail us today!
We proudly offer all our foundation repair services in San Antonio, Corpus Christi, and South Texas.