What is Differential Settlement of Foundation?

Settlement issues can be difficult to deal with when fixing a home’s foundation. If your products fail, it is likely that your client will not recommend you or your business and might leave scathing reviews which turn others away.

As a contractor, you want your clients to have the best products so you stay highly regarded and recommended. GridLock Stabilizers’ newest technology-forward products will modernize your repair process as well as cut down on costs.

Even the Odds of Structural Damage

When a building has an uneven settlement, it could be due to a number of reasons. Differential settlement, as contractors call it, is the result of the moving or sinking of the foundation in an uneven manner. It is one of the most common types of foundation settlement. When this happens, it causes cracking in the building’s foundation. That’s because one side of the structure is sinking faster than the other, putting stress and strain on the foundation. Eventually, that uneven sinking creates far too much strain, causing the foundation to crack and putting the structural integrity of the home at risk.

No matter the underlying cause of this, it all leads to one thing. That’s the need to repair the building’s foundation. Addressing foundation settlement is not an option. It is a highly necessary step to ensure that the homeowners today and in years to come have a safe and structurally sound house. Without repair, there’s likely to be distortion to the building, including sloping floors, windows, and doors that do not open and close properly and framing concerns.

GridLock Stabilizers offer a solution that’s significantly different than the older, outdated methods of foundation repair. Here’s what you need to know to make adjustments to the foundation repair work you’re doing to give property owners better results (and to provide your business with a few key benefits, too).

Out with the Old, In with the Newer, and Better Solution

Foundation settlement problems are nothing new. There are numerous methods to fix differential settlement issues that have been in use for decades. Typically, these repairs require underpinning the foundation using piers. There are several types commonly employed:

• Helical piers: Sometimes called screw piles, these have a central shaft and several plates in a helix shape. This method is best for light structures.
• Push piers: These are driven into the ground hydraulically, which allows the structure’s weight to pass onto stronger soils below.
• Slab piers: This method has a specific design to help provide stability or raise sunken slabs. They go into the ground to load-bearing soil. Then, grout is pumped into the gaps under the slab prior to pouring concrete over the holes.

These methods provide marginal benefits and often cost a significant amount of labor and material to get results.

GridLock’s patent-pending Foundation Stabilizers are revolutionizing foundation repair. This method for fixing a foundation offers key improvements over other methods, including:

• Strength: Grid-Lock stabilizers provide up to 20,000 pounds of support, providing the best industrial strength on support and stability.
• Efficiency: This method is far more efficient on cost and installation process, saving contractors a significant amount of money and time.
• Lifetime value: Homeowners don’t have to worry about their foundation again because this solution provides a lifetime of stabilization.

Fight Weak Soil with Strong Products

Uniform settlement often happens due to the soil located under the building. That soil’s bearing capacity ranges widely. If your client’s home has weak soil, they have a very weak bearing capacity. That means that structures built on this are likely to need footings that help to spread the load of the building over a much wider area. This helps prevent differential settlement from occurring.

Also, note that poorly compacted soil is another concern. Artificial leveling during the construction process is necessary to compact soil to create a strong structural base. If that doesn’t happen, the building’s weight will cause differential settlement to occur. Another concern is expansive clay soil. Expansive clay is the worst type of soil for buildings because it can swell with water. During wet seasons it expands, and during dry seasons it contracts, causing risk to the structure. These are some of the most common causes of differential settlement.

Differential foundation settlement puts the entire structure under effective stress, causing foundation cracks and limitations on load-bearing capacity. In many ways, this causes the home to look like the leaning tower of Pisa!

With poor soil conditions and deformation of the home as a result of differential settlement, your client’s home needs the very best solutions possible. GridLock Foundation Stabilizers provide that. In fact, we provide a solution for all foundation concerns – shallow foundations, undersized foundations, extreme cases of damage, weak soils, and groundwater problems.

Even in situations where there was no structural engineer on board in the building of a property, GridLock Foundation Stabilizers offer a better solution. They can be used to remedy uneven foundation problems years later after the building was constructed. As a contractor trying to determine what to do about such soil types or voids, you’ll find our products have a design to be a reliable solution that helps your business to get the job done.

Interested in Adding Our Products to Your Company?

GridLock Foundation Stabilizers are the most efficient and strongest modern foundation system available today. This is the foundation system designed for the 21st century. It includes products engineered to be efficient (and even easy) to install. This system:

• Has less training involved
• Reduces the amount of expensive equipment you need
• Uses fewer materials to install
• Creates far better efficiency and profitability for contractors
• Is impressively strong – covering 260 times more surface area than push piers as an alternative

These systems have been designed to last a lifetime. When you need solutions for the consolidation of soil and civil engineers aren’t even sure how to fix the problem, lean on GridLock Stabilizers. As a total settlement solution for multiple types of foundation settlement, we are confident we can help you impress your customers.

Keep homeowners happy by using your skills with our products.