| Repair My Foundation-A Homeowner's Look at the Options

Archive for August, 2006

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Trying on Bell Bottom Piers For Foundation Repair

By on Thursday, August 31st, 2006 | No Comments

If you’ve been trying to get a grasp on foundation repair jargon and have been hearing the term “bell bottom piers“, the Du-West website has a pretty good explanation. It has nothing to do with pants. Another term for bell bottom piers is “drilled piers.” There is also a drawing on the site to give [...]

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Twisting The Piers Under Your House Foundation

By on Thursday, August 17th, 2006 | No Comments

It’s not very often that a word used on  foundation repair companies websites sends me running for the dictionary. It did today, but more on that in a moment. OK, if you just can’t wait, the word is “thixotropy.” If you live in a part of the country where you are bombarded with commercials for [...]

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Soaker Hoses on Steroids

By on Thursday, August 10th, 2006 | 2 Comments

I’ve been talking about using soaker hoses to keep the soil around my foundation from completely drying up during this blazing hot and dry summer. If you have shrink-swell clay soil it can shrink away from your concrete slab during dry periods and possibly cause damage. This morning, I ran across the website of a [...]

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Clay Soils are Tough on Streets Too

By on Thursday, August 10th, 2006 | No Comments

The Branyon and Houston-Black clay soils that my neighborhood sits atop heaves and breaks up streets in addition to foundations. The street two blocks behind me is getting an extreme makeover. This street feeds a nearby school and takes a fair amount of traffic. School buses, heavy city trucks and normal traffic takes it’s toll [...]

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Your House Foundation Is On What Kind of Soil?

By on Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 | No Comments

My concrete slab foundation sits on Branyon clay. A couple of blocks away there are areas of Houston-Black and Lewisville silty clay. None of this is happy news. How did I aquire this fascinating knowledge? Why, from the Web Soil Survey tool on the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service website.

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