Basement and Pavement Cracks – Should You Worry?
The Colorado climate is a joy to live in most of the time. There’s a lot to love – mild weather almost year-round, easy access to the mountains, over 300 days of sunshine. But because of the dry air, and the rapid swings in weather we tend to get (sure, they don’t stick around, but they still happen!), the climate that you and your family love to live in can cause some serious problems for your home’s foundation, sometimes resulting in foundation repair.
It’s all in the Climate
The combination of dry weather and big swings in a single day, your soil does a lot of work to remain stable. Sometimes, you can see a 75-degree afternoon and a snowstorm overnight, or a sudden onslaught of heavy rain that’s gone in 20 minutes, but leaves flash-flooding in its wake. All of these things cause soil to shift and expand or contract depending on the temperature of the day. These shifts in soil negatively impact your home’s foundation. That is what surrounds the foundation of your home, after all.
What to Look for
Because there’s so much happening below your yard, it’s not unusual to see cracks in the pavement around your home, or on the outside of your foundation. When these things crop up, they’re worth keeping an eye on, and monitoring in case they grow in size, but there’s no need to immediately assume the worst.
You should also keep an eye out for cracks in your walls, especially in the basement, as those are an indicator that the soil might be wreaking a little more havoc than you want on your home’s foundation and could be leading to some foundation problems.
Don’t Panic!
Whatever type of cracks you’re seeing – pavement or walls, we encourage you not to panic. It can be a little scary, flashes of scenes from movies where homes disappear into sinkholes or collapse in on themselves flitting through your mind. We get it – this is your home; you don’t want anything to happen to it! Often, these cracks are no cause for panic, but a symptom of living that Colorado life where soil shift happens. When you see cracking in the walls of your basement, it’s worth giving a trusted foundation repair team a call, just so they can come and check it out. If it needs to be addressed, the team will have options for you then and there, and will be able to help you determine how immediately the cracks, and the foundation damage that may have caused them, need to be tended to.
Before you call in a team to look at any cracks that might be making you a little nervous, make sure you’ll be working with people who aren’t going to use scare tactics to talk you into a big bill and an unnecessary project. The team at Pinnacle Structural Services will shoot straight with you, and will never pressure you to fix something that doesn’t truly need it to remain safe. If you need something checked out, but don’t want to worry about the pressure, give us a call today at 720-202-7015.