Shifting Soil Threatens Homes’ Foundations

[Adsos Letter]

Source: The New York Times
By KATE MURPHY

STEVEN DERSE, the owner of a corporate travel business in Nashville, cannot feel his house move, but he can hear it. “It’s an eerie creaking sound,” he said, and it echoes throughout his two-story Georgian-style house.

It started two years ago when a severe drought contracted the soil beneath the foundation, which caused it to crack and sink, pulling the house down with it. The noise has continued intermittently, becoming more insistent last year when flooding pushed the already compromised foundation and house back upward.

This seesawing effect was noisy and expensive. Mr. Derse has spent more than $10,000 to install subterranean piers to stabilize his foundation, and he expects he will have to install more to prevent further cracking and crumbling. “You lose your sense of security,” he said. “You love your home and then it literally turns on you.”

His is not the only house buffeted by shifting soil. Extreme weather possibly linked to climate change, as well as construction on less stable ground, have provoked unprecedented foundation failures in houses nationwide. Foundation repair companies report a doubling and tripling of their business in the last two decades with no let-up even during the recession

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/garden/04foundation.html?ref=science
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This can only add to the stresses homeowners are going through in these times.

[csziggy]

1. Wow - boy am I glad we put a lot of extra $$$$ in our foundation!

Because we are on clay soils, the county required it. It was the one area we went over the original budget by a significant extent.

I feel bad for the homeowners - no one needs a hit like this in times like these.

[vadawg]

2. my foundation is actually the bedrock of the mountain, so barring anything cataclysmic

i hope we will be okay, but even in the worst scenario its only a house that can be rebuilt, im not too worried about it...