Soaker Hoses on Steroids

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 company that sells what you could call soaker hoses on steroids.

It’s a system designed to water the soil around your foundation good and deep and keep it that way.

If you are in the Houston area you can get them to install it for you. Otherwise, you can buy the parts and do it yourself. They are obviously competing for your dollars with the concrete and steel piers folks, so read the following from their website with that thought in mind.

Foundation Repair Through Foundation Soil Stabilization

Foundation repair is an issue many homeowners face. If you live in the southern or southwestern United States, and the foundation of your home is a concrete slab, then you may have, or will have, a major problem.

The expansion and contraction of the clay soil your slab rests on may eventually crack your slab, devaluing or even destroying your home. Foundation repair can’t be ignored.

The “traditional” answer to foundation repair has been to erect “piers” to jack up the foundation and raise it off the expansive clay soil. Piers have several distinct disadvantages and drawbacks.

They are very expensive, installation is destructive to vegetation and landscaping, they often cause additional damage to the foundation and interior walls during installation, the foundation may fail again between pier locations, and often, the piers themselves fail.

When soil dries again and shrinks, the house begins to rely more and more on the support of the piers, which the original foundation was not designed to do.Foundation experts and engineers continue to advise that it is essential to maintain constant moisture of the soil around the beneath the foundation.

In doing so, the problems of differential settlement of foundations can be reversed and avoided. Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington have proved this to be true.

Micro-Flo Industries has a superior solution to the problem, and our approach is a real solution to the underlying problem, not merely a treatment of the symptoms.

Our Micro-Flo Moisture Control System meters and delivers the exact amount of water to slowly replenish and maintain the moisture around and beneath the home at a depth approximately 12″ to 18″ from the foundation.Our system furnishes small volumes of moisture to all sides of a foundation.

Maintaining uniform moisture in the soil requires as little as 5 gallons per hour of water and minimizes expansion and contraction forces that crack foundations. In combination with a root-barrier and proper drainage, this system can keep your home foundation in good shape for years to come.

Edited to update new URL for Micro-Flo.

Micro-Flo Foundation Guard

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