When the winter chill sets in, many homeowners experience the discomfort of cold floors. While this issue may seem perplexing, the root cause often lurks beneath your home – in your crawlspace.
In this blog post, we’ll explore how unhealthy crawlspaces can lead to cold floors and discuss the solution, crawlspace encapsulation, that can help you regain warmth and comfort in your home.
Waterproofing your basement is a vital investment for any home. A leaky basement will lead to problems such as damaged building material, efflorescence on the walls, high humidity, and mould issues. These are big issues because the air that is in your basement is the air you breathe throughout your entire home.
But which method of basement waterproofing is best? Interior or Exterior? We’re going to walk through the pros and cons of each so that you can decide which solution will be best for your home.
A drain tile system is a waterproofing system intended to prevent water from pooling around your home foundation. It is a simple and ingenious way to protect your home from harmful basement flooding. Most homes, even significantly older ones, have a drain tile system installed already from when they were constructed. In most situations, it’s illegal to not have it.
Drain tile sits beneath the foundation of a home on the interior or exterior. It collects water from soil and redirects it either by gravity or electronically through a sump pump to a storm sewer system or safely away from the home. Whether installed on the exterior or interior, drain tile performs the same job, but we’ll explain later on in the post why we think interior drain tile is better.
Foundation shifting is a natural stage of a settling foundation. “Shifting” refers to the sinking movement of a foundation into the ground as its immense weight settles. In the first few weeks of being built, a foundation will experience “uniform settlement” which is when the entire foundation shifts together the same amount.
However, issues arises when a foundation begins to experience “differential settlement”, which is when certain parts of the foundation are shifting more or less than others. Factors such as heavy rainfalls, improper yard grading, clogged downspouts, plumbing leaks, expanding and contracting soil, and frost heave all cause foundations to shift unevenly. Over time, even the smallest differential foundation movement can cause significant problems that will require foundation repair.
Windsor-Essex has a strange relationship with Spring melt. Winter snow comes and goes. Temperatures fluctuate. We go back and forth between two weeks of rain and thaw and then two weeks of snow and ground freezing. Rather than one big Spring melt, we have multiple smaller ones.
This back and forth causes soil to become clogged with water, creating a tremendous amount of hydrostatic pressure. This hydrostatic pressure forces water through your foundation walls or the mortar holding cement blocks together. On top of this, Windsor has a high-water table, sitting only 2 meters below ground level in some areas. Water has few places to travel to, which is why it forces its way into your home through your foundation.