Residential Foundation Stabilization
Soil grouting procedures address the causes for settlement, which are a soil's inability to sustain the load bearing capacity of a particular structure. Unstable soils are stabilized and consolidated by the injection of a cement based grout into soft areas, fissures or partings in the soil. This procedure densifies weak soil, fills voids, drives out perched water and places a non-compressible cement grout beneath a structure’s footing. Grouting greatly increases the soils long term load bearing capabilities, permanently stabilizing the foundation.
Small diameter injection pipes are inserted to the bottom of the zone to be stabilized or to a depth of refusal below the foundation to be stabilized. Pipes are driven into place then retracted a few inches to open the end of the injection pipe allowing the grout to be injected.
Foundations are designed to be uniformly supported by soil. Cement grouting allows a structure’s footings to maintain contact with the soil during and after the densification procedure and allowed to function as the structure was intended. Jacking a structure with pin pilings or hydraulic jacking equipment causes point loading of the foundation, a situation for which it is not designed. Point pilings, as they raise a structure, create loading which often results in foundation cracking. Also, as a foundation is raised on a point load, voids are created under the foundation that later must be filled.
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Failure to completely fill voids will allow water to accumulate in these voids, potentially compromising unsupported areas. Precautionary steps must also be taken when filling such voids that the thin viscous grout required to fill the voids does not infiltrate the foundation’s de-watering drain tiles.
Cement grouting does not require excavation, whereas, piles and piers require excavation and/or the removal of portions of the footing, driveways, sidewalks, patios, decks or landscaping, increasing costs, disruption and project duration.
In most grouting applications, 100% of the repairs are performed from the exterior and completed grouting operations are undetectable within hours and a typical project’s duration is 1 to 3 days.