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Your Leading Foundation Repair Contractor in Rapid City, SD, & Nearby Areas

Rapid Foundation Repair is your trusted contractor for foundation repair in South Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska. Unfortunately, foundation failure can strike anyone at any time. Your home relies on your foundation, so if your foundation is failing, the rest of your home is bound to have problems, too.

What Can Cause Foundation Failure?

To some degree, it depends on the type of foundation and the type of foundation failure, but the answer will almost always be found in the soil beneath the building.

If the foundation is experiencing uneven settlement, there are several potential causes. First, the soil might not have been properly compacted before construction. The weight of the house would then be too much for the soil to support properly.

Erosion could also weaken the soil beneath a building, and soils with extreme shrink-swell cycles can also cause foundation settlement or heaving. Regardless, if the soil can’t properly support the weight of the home, foundation settlement will occur, and it is unlikely that the foundation will settle evenly. Uneven foundation settlement stresses the entirety of the structure, from the foundation itself to the chimney.

If the issue is basement foundation walls cracking and bowing inward, the soil next to them exerts more inward pressure than the walls can stand. Often, this is caused by hydrostatic pressure from water in the soil around the base of your foundation.

If you have a pier-and-beam or crawl space foundation, the problem could be with the foundation components themselves. If individual piers are settling or deteriorating, they could need to be replaced or reinforced. Similarly, if wood rot has weakened any beams or floor joists, they will likely need to be replaced or given additional support.

Common Problems to Look Out For:

• Basement Wall Cracks: Any horizontal or vertical cracks are dangerous and will only grow over time. Horizontal cracks are often caused by hydrostatic pressure applied to the walls by the adjacent soil. Vertical or diagonal cracks, or stair-step cracks in masonry walls, are often caused by foundation settlement.
• Leaning Chimney: Foundation problems can throw your entire home out of alignment. Those issues can extend all the way to your chimney, which can begin leaning because of problems stemming from foundation settlement.
• Stoop and Porch Problems: Foundation problems may cause a sinking stoop or one pulling away from your home.
• Wet Basements: While not directly caused by foundation problems, basement wall cracks can allow water to enter the basement.
• Leaning or Bowing Walls: Leaning or bowing walls, often accompanied by horizontal cracks, are a sign that pressure from the soil outside has become too great for the walls to bear. The earlier you have bowing walls fixed, the better. Not only could they, in time, fail and collapse, but the worse the bowing gets, the more limited your repair options become. The necessary repairs also get more invasive as the bowing gets worse.
• Garage Column Cracks: Garage column cracks indicate a sinking foundation in your garage. These cracks should be fixed immediately, especially if the columns are supporting the rest of the structure.

Solutions for Foundation Repair

Rapid Foundation Repair offers multiple solutions for foundation repair in South Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska. At Rapid Foundation Repair, our well-trained staff has the experience to repair your foundation failure correctly. We have multiple fixes for each of the main types of foundation problems so we can match the solution to your particular home.

Foundation Settlement

To combat foundation settlement, you must provide the home with a solid base that can provide what the soil underneath it cannot. We use a piering system composed of helical and push piers to do this.

The general philosophy behind both is the same: the piers are drilled down into the ground to reach a sturdier level of soil or bedrock in the case of push piers. The building is then hydraulically raised back to its pre-settlement height so it is level before the load of the building is transferred onto the piers.

Several factors determine whether push piers or helical piers make the most sense for a building, including, in some cases, bedrock depth. With either one, however, you get the strength of steel and a load-tested system before the house’s weight is transferred onto it.

Bowing Walls

At Rapid Foundation Repair, we offer three different solutions for bowing basement walls: carbon fiber straps, helical tiebacks, and plate anchors.

Carbon fiber repair offers several advantages. Its installation occurs entirely within the basement, removing the need for exterior excavations. It is also low profile, sitting relatively flush with the wall so that you can paint or drywall over it.

However, Carbon fiber’s specialty is stabilizing walls, similar to the older method of installing I-beams along the wall. If the wall is bowing enough to need to be straightened, a different repair option might be recommended.

Helical tiebacks anchor the wall in the soil outside, counteracting the hydrostatic pressure pushing in on it. In both cases, a metal rod is sunk or drilled from the inside of the wall into the ground. One end of the rod is attached to a plate on the inside of the basement wall.

With a plate anchor, the plate that anchors the end in the ground is installed by excavating where the steel rod ends. With helical tiebacks, excavations along the foundation wall allow for the attaching of helical plates, which are screwed into the ground to anchor it. Each of these methods allows for more straightening of the wall than carbon fiber can.

Crawl Space Repair

Crawl space repair depends on the problem. If it is simply a sunken or deteriorating pier, it or the piers can be replaced.

However, if it results from wood rot stemming from crawl space moisture problems, a two-step approach is usually needed. First, any affected beams or floor joists likely will need to be replaced. Second, the crawl space should be encapsulated, using a vapor barrier and other elements to prevent moisture problems from recurring.

Rapid Foundation Repair offers a solution to fit your needs, no matter what the problem is with your foundation, basement, or crawlspace.

Are you looking for a Foundation Repair Contractor in Rapid City, Pierre, Casper, or the Surrounding Areas?

Rapid Foundation Repair offers professional foundation repair and other services throughout much of South Dakota, eastern Wyoming, and northern Nebraska. If your home or business is experiencing foundation problems, contact us today, and one of our foundation specialists will give you a free estimate.