The foundation for your house may be a full-height basement, a crawl space, a slab-on-grade foundation or even a combination of two or more types. Foundation materials include poured concrete, unit masonry, stone and preserved wood. Each type of foundation or material has its own associated problems.

The most common Issues related to structure or ground conditions are:

• Cracks in slabs, walls or footings;
• Crumbling mortar or concrete;
• Unstable or weak ground;
• Uneven settlement;
• Warped or bowed foundation walls;
• Adfreezing (frozen earth sticking to the foundation and lifting it) or frost heaving;
• Low ceiling height;
• Inadequate support of the main floor system;
• Soil gas or radon infiltration;
• High humidity;
• Pest infestation.
  
  
  

Begin with waterproofing from the exterior first.

This basement has been lowered by 18 inches allowing another happy Belvedere customer to turn their unusable basement into a finished living area.

Belvedere's Underpinning Basement foundation walls:

In this method, a sequence of holes are dug-out from under the footing of your home. ( The footing is the concrete or brick pad which spreads the load of the foundation walls onto the soil. ) Typically, a series of 4' wide holes, separated by 8' of undisturbed soil, is prepared and filled with concrete. The top 2" of the concrete filled hole is packed with non-shrink grout, rather than filled to the top with concrete, so as to avoid the possibility that air pockets are present. Once the first series of holes are filled with concrete, the adjacent 4' wide segment is dug-out, and the underpinning process continues. Here, the idea is that you extend the footing of the house to a lower level, which then permits you to dig-out the soil from the inside of the basement, without undermining the foundation walls of the house. The process is very labour intensive, and quite costly.