Keeping Your Home Clean in Spring

It is universally recognized that Springtime is the time of the year when homeowners put away winter items, clean out any cobwebs, and make sure your lawn is well manicured in time for warmer weather. While you may think of Spring cleaning as something cosmetic, there are also ways you can maintain the structural integrity of your home. There is a plethora of reasons as to why you should be staying on top of your foundation’s welfare, including cleaning out gutters and checking brick walls and concrete floors for cracks. Maintaining your home’s foundation, basement, crawl space, and even gutters is an extremely important task, so why not just add foundation maintenance to your Spring cleaning list.  

Maintaining Your Home in Spring

Keeping your home well maintained is important, as time can begin to wear down its structure. This can lead to cracking concrete, deteriorating gutters, moldy crawl spaces, wet basements, and a sinking foundation. You can avoid running into these problems by performing regular inspections throughout the year. If you can’t commit to regular maintenance, then you should at least be evaluating your home once a year. You can make it easy on yourself by setting your annual cleaning date during Spring when people are cleaning out their homes and manicuring their lawns. There are a variety of places you need to be assessing when trying to maintain your home’s foundation. These areas include your: 

Basement: Not every home has a basement; however, if your home has one, you should be checking it for signs of damage. Damage to your basement can include cracked floors and walls, damp spots and standing water, and even mold and mildew growth. If you live in areas where there is excessive precipitation, soils that hold moisture, or both, it is especially important to keep your basement secure. 

Concrete Areas: Your driveway, sidewalk, and patio can be at risk of damage, especially if they are constructed of concrete. Over time, concrete will start to wear down and crack, sink, or both. Cracked concrete is not just an eyesore, it is potentially a liability. Accidents – like tripping over cracks and falling – can lead to minor or major injuries. Keeping your concrete in good repair is something you need to remember when participating in Spring cleaning. 

Crawl Space: A crawl space is an unfinished space underneath your home. Excess humidity, water, high precipitation, and moist soil can cause damage to the wooden structure of your crawl space. Wood starts to rot and mold when it is exposed to water, causing a weakened crawl space, and triggering asthma and allergies. While we do not recommend entering your crawl space on your own, you can still shine a light inside to assess the immediate area for damage. 

Foundation: If your home’s foundation is not maintained, then your entire house could be at risk of structural failure. You can help protect your home’s foundation by taking a variety of steps. Improving the landscape around your home, checking the doors and windows for sticking, and assessing the external walls for cracks are all ways that you can keep your foundation standing firm for years to come.  

Gutters: Gutters are one of the most important aspects of your home that you should be sure to maintain. Damaged gutters can cause water to damage the siding and brick of your home and can even contribute to flooding in basements and crawl space. When evaluating your gutter’s condition, signs of damage that you should be looking for include cracks, an improper slope or tilt, blockages, and disconnections at the joints of your gutters. 

Trust Us for Your Annual Spring Cleaning 

At Groundworks, we provide various foundation services that can take on your foundation problems. Our skilled inspectors and technicians are equipped with both the tools and knowledge to properly evaluate your home, and repair issues to your basement, crawl space, foundation, concrete, or gutters. Our innovative solutions are designed to make being a homeowner easy. Here are some common solutions we use to repair your home. 

Installation of Wall Anchors and Support Piers: If your foundation is faltering, adding wall anchors or helical piers can help strengthen, stabilize, and sometimes lift. Our SettleStop wall anchors are designed to stabilize your foundation walls by keeping them anchored in one spot. We also provide different pier solutions – such as helical piers and push piers. These are mainly used for stabilizing your foundation. 

Add a sump pump to your wet basement or crawl space. Sump pumps allow you to pump out the water, whether the water is from flooding or a leak. These devices are ideal if you want to keep your basement – and the personal belongings stored inside – free of water damage. Additionally, your crawl space will be protected from excess ground water entering the space. 

Protect your crawl space further by adding a crawl space vapor barrier. These barriers are specially made to prevent moisture from entering the crawl space. At Groundworks, we utilize a 20-mil vapor barrier, making the crawl space even more waterproof.  

Our AquaStop BasementGutter™ is an interior drainage solution that is designed to prevent water from pooling in your basement. The system is placed along the inside perimeter of your home’s basement. It collects trickling water from cracks in your basement walls or through the wall-floor joint. The collected water is then redirected to your basement’s sump pump. 

When it comes to cracked or sinking concrete, we utilize an innovative product called PolyRenewal™. This product uses polyurethane foam to fill in the cracks and voids of your concrete. The product expands to lift and stabilize the concrete, making it a much simpler process than outdated mudjacking. 

Keep your home in excellent condition by staying on top of maintenance each Spring. You can help prevent harmful damage to your home, as well as costly repairs. By adding foundation maintenance to your annual Spring Cleaning checklist, you don’t have to worry about forgetting this important task. And, if you do find any damage to your home’s foundation, you can contact our skilled team for a FREE, no-obligation inspection.