Foundation, Basement, and Crawl Space Repair in Dover, DE
Safeguard your residence from foundation, basement, and crawl space damage with patented repair methods tailored to your home’s needs. Groundworks ensures your Dover home remains safe and dry, protecting it from whatever comes its way.
Foundation, Basement, and Crawl Space Repair in Dover, DE
Located in the Delaware River coastal plain, Dover enjoys a warm temperate climate with common heavy thunderstorms in the summer. Winters are generally mild, with light snowfall. However, this pleasant weather can challenge your home’s foundation due to the area’s primarily clay-based Greenwich soil. Heavy summer rains and snowmelt in winter can cause foundation, basement, and crawl space flooding and leaks, leading to significant structural damage.
Contact Groundworks if you observe issues like a damp basement, humidity, foundation cracks, mold, or bowing walls. Our patented, warrantied solutions can restore your home, providing reliable safety for many years.
Solutions Offered in Dover, DE
Foundation Repair
When problems with your home’s foundation arise, it can bring a variety of other issues along with it. Here’s how our specialized solutions can repair your home’s foundation to it’s original stability.
Basement Waterproofing
Curious about wet basement repair? Groundworks provides local residential and commercial basement waterproofing services. We offer free inspections!
Crawl Space Repair
When it comes to the health of your home’s crawl space, there are many factors and problem signs at work. Knowing what the signs are could help you indicate that it’s time for repairs.
Concrete Lifting
The stability and consistency of the concrete around your home is an important factor to it’s overall aesthetic and wellbeing. Here’s what you should know about the concrete lifting options for your home.
Groundworks Service Areas
Foundation Repair:
Sinking/Settling Foundation
Foundation settlement and sinking concrete happen when the weight of the home exceeds what the soil underneath can support. This damage often occurs due to improper initial home construction, where contractors fill the ground soil around the foundation without correct compaction measures. Groundworks experts solve this by stabilizing the foundation and installing steel foundation piers beneath the ground. This approach ensures a safe and stable home you can rely on.
Tilting Chimneys
When you discover that your home’s chimney is tilting, it can cause concern. Typically, this tilting occurs when your foundation sinks or settles into the soil, causing the chimney to detach from the home. We employ helical pier systems to lift and stabilize tilting chimneys, addressing these issues and restoring your chimney to its original position while preventing future problems.
Wall Straightening
If your home’s walls are bowing, it may signal foundation problems. Our SettleStop IntelliBrace™ Wall Repair System repairs and stabilizes failing foundation walls, gradually restoring them to their original position. Wall straightening is a crucial aspect of Groundworks’ comprehensive approach to foundation repair.
Basement Waterproofing
Basement Water Damage
A flooded basement and musty, smelly odors can signal water infiltration. Water can easily penetrate your home from plumbing leaks, heavy rains, hydrostatic pressure, or wall cracks. Groundworks installs interior drainage, sump pumps, and vapor barriers as part of our patented basement waterproofing solutions. These combined methods ensure a dry, healthy basement for your Dover, DE, home.
BasementGutter™ Interior Drainage
Interior drainage installation ensures your Dover home stays safe and dry. Our patented BasementGutter™ Interior Drainage solution intercepts leaking water and directs it to a sump pump to prevent water damage and an unhealthy environment, guaranteeing the ongoing protection of your basement against potential water issues.
Basement Sump Pump
Basement sump pump installation prevents the damaging effects of water on your Dover home. By intercepting the water collected by the interior drainage system and pumping it through a discharge line, it channels water away from your home’s foundation, safeguarding it against potential water-related damage and preserving its structural integrity.
Crawl Space Repair
Crawl Space Mold
Moist, dim, and humid conditions provide the perfect breeding ground for mold growth, all of which are present in your crawl space. While mold is not uncommon, its presence can pose health risks to your family and compromise your home’s stability. It is crucial to address the symptoms of mold and the underlying causes to prevent further issues.
The Stack Effect
The stack effect describes how warmer, lighter air ascends while colder, denser air descends. This phenomenon occurs as outside air infiltrates your crawl space, leading to condensation, increased humidity, and mold growth. To shield your home from the stack effect, our experts will seal and encapsulate your property’s crawl space vents to prevent outside moisture infiltration.
Crawl Space Encapsulation
Leaving crawl space vents open or uncovered invites pests, outdoor moisture, and rain inside, and fosters ideal conditions for mold growth. While it was once thought that open vents facilitated air circulation and maintained dryness, this belief has been proven incorrect over time. Open vents contribute to condensation, pooling water, and structural issues. Encapsulating your crawl space prevents and protects against these problems, providing long-term crawl space health.
Concrete Lifting
Driveway Repair
Cracked concrete driveways jeopardize your Dover home’s safety and curb appeal. Our specialists quickly and effectively repair concrete driveways using our patented PolyRenewal™concrete lifting solution. This technique restores the existing concrete slab, enhancing safety, curb appeal, and property value.
Interior Slab Lifting
Over time, concrete slabs may sink and settle due to various factors, jeopardizing its structural stability. Uneven concrete, floor gaps, and sinking concrete may reflect this damage. Our patented PolyRenewal™ foam injection is a non-invasive repair method that restores floors to their original position by lifting the concrete slab.
Sidewalk Repair
Sidewalks and walkways around your home endure significant wear and tear. When the soil beneath the concrete slabs shifts or settles, it can cause cracking, sinking, and uneven surfaces, posing trip hazards. Fortunately, there’s no need for costly replacement. Our experts lift and restore cracked and sinking concrete sidewalks, preventing further damage and ensuring long-term safety for your Dover home.
Common Issues in Your Home
Common Foundation Solutions
Common Solutions in Dover, DE
Mold in Crawl Space
Mold can be a huge problem in a crawl space. If you have mold in your crawl space, how can you make the situation better for your home?
Basement Sump Pump
Water leaking into your basement can be a real pain to deal with. What is the most effective solution for keeping your basement clean and dry?
Dehumidifier
Preserve indoor air quality and prevent mold and wood rot with our basement air systems.
Wall Anchors
Wall anchors can help strengthen your foundation so it doesn’t fail. What can you get out of wall anchors in your home overall?
We get it right the first time around.
We are experts at what we do, and you deserve the best customer service and repair solutions installed the right way. That’s why we go the extra mile.
Frequently Asked Questions
The soil immediately surrounding your foundation is a lot looser than the soil farther away. This is because when your home was built, a bowl-like hole was excavated, and the foundation was built in this space. After the foundation was built, the gaps were backfilled with the soil that was previously removed. The problem with this is that the soil used as backfill is a lot more porous that the densely packed soil the foundation sits on. This porous soil is able to absorb a lot of water, making it a dangerous threat to your foundation. The clay bowl effect is something many homeowners in Dover have to worry about. This problem is incredibly persistent in areas where the soil is primarily made of clay. These soils already have a high expansion capacity, but in a state like Delaware, the soil is capable of getting saturated quite easily. When it rains, not only does the rainwater directly affect the soil, it also raises the water table. Because of the soil, the weather, and the clay bowl effect, foundations in Dover are in constant need of repairs.
A good way to determine whether your basement or crawl space has high humidity levels is to check if the concrete has efflorescence stains. Efflorescence is a white, powdery substance on the surface of concrete. If you touch it or scrape it, it feels grainy and some of it flakes off. At times, homeowners will confuse efflorescence for mold, but this is incorrect. Efflorescence is salt, which you can feel the texture of if you scrape it off the concrete.
Efflorescence appears on your concrete either due to primary efflorescence or secondary efflorescence. Primary efflorescence usually occurs 48 to 72 hours after the concrete is poured and it’s a result of an excess amount of water in the cement mixture. As the cement cures, the water evaporates and rises to the surface of the concrete but brings along with it all the salts and minerals from the cement. Even professionals get a bad mixture from time to time, but an experienced contractor is less likely to make cement that produces efflorescence.
If you’re looking for the best way to lift your settled concrete slab, look no further than polyurethane injections. This concrete lifting system utilizes polyurethane foam to lift concrete back into place. Small holes are drilled into the concrete in order to inject the polyurethane foam until there’s enough under the slab to lift and support it. This is a modern, innovative approach to concrete lifting that solves every problem associated with traditional methods. What makes this method so great is all about what the material is made with. Mudjacking, the traditional method of concrete lifting, consists of pumping a cement slurry under the concrete to lift the slab. However, because of how heavy and rough the cement is, it puts pressure on the soil below, increasing the chances of displacement and settling. The cement is also too rough to properly fill the gap under the slab, so some parts remain unsupported after the job is done. Mudjacking is also rather tedious because it can take hours for the work to be completed and you still need to wait hours more for the cement to cure before putting any pressure on the slab. Polyurethane foam eliminates all those inconveniences.
Having a beautiful, healthy tree growing on your property makes your yard look interesting and visually pleasing. However, there’s a good chance that your tree is ruining your foundation and causing those pesky leaks in your basement or crawl space. Many homeowners misunderstand how a tree is able to do so much damage and believe that the tree roots themselves are the issue when it’s actually the soil. Like most problems pertaining to foundation damage, expansive soils are the culprits, not the tree roots. The characteristics of clay soils make it so trees encourage shrink-swell capacities and soil displacement.