Foundation Soils
What Is Your Home Sitting On?
The simple answer is “the ground”. However, the real answer is a bit more complicated than that. Soils are composed of different ingredients like sand, silt, loam, and clay. These ingredients determine how soil foundations behave under wet and dry conditions and when they need to support the weight. Soil characteristics have a major effect on a house’s foundation.
Common Soil Types in Georgia
Different soil types are affected by moisture in different ways. Each of these foundation soil types reacts to water differently:
Clay Soil
This is one of the most prevalent Georgia soil types, known for its fine texture and high water retention capacity. It can be challenging for foundation soil due to its tendency to expand and contract with moisture changes.
Sandy Soil
Found in various parts of the state, sandy soil is well-draining but may not provide the best support for foundation soil, as its loose composition is prone to shifting and settling over time.
Loamy Soil
This ideal foundation soil type is a mix of sand, silt, and clay, offering good drainage and stability. It is often considered the best for building foundations in Georgia.
How Does Foundation Soil Affect Your Home?
Weather conditions in the Atlanta metro area and beyond can change drastically, and the year-round humid climate has a major impact on the soil beneath your home and the stability of your foundation. Because of the constant cycle of wet and dry periods that occur as the weather changes, certain types of soil can expand and contract indefinitely, subjecting your foundation to settling or expansive stresses that often cause damage.
Understanding the specific foundation soil types is crucial for construction and maintenance. Proper assessment and preparation of the foundation soil can prevent structural problems, ensuring the longevity and safety of homes built on the diverse soil types in Georgia.
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The “Active Zone” Of Foundation Soil
Your home is resting atop many different layers of soil, each with different thicknesses and performance characteristics that can affect a house foundation. These soil layers have been formed over thousands of years of sediment deposits or shifts – some by water, some by wind, some by glaciers, and some by the contractor who built your home.
Typically, soil layers gain in stability and load-bearing capacity with depth. The surface layer is made up of organic materials, making it easy for plants and vegetation to grow. As you delve further, you’ll find layers of sand, silt, clay, and loam soils, depending on where you live. Deep below these layers is a layer of bedrock. Bedrock is a layer composed of either rock or very stable, densely packed soils.
The soil you should be most concerned about is known as the active zone immediately around and underneath and adjacent to your house. This soil is most affected by changes in moisture and climate and serves as the source of most foundation problems. The active zone may vary from a few feet below the surface to more than 30′ below grade, depending on what area of the country you live in.
How to Address Unstable Foundation Soil
Professional foundation repair is the best way to address homes affected by unsteady foundation soil conditions. These are some of the solutions a foundation repair expert may recommend for your home:
Helical Piers
Helical piers are screw-like steel shafts that are drilled into the ground to reach stable, load-bearing soil beneath the foundation. They are particularly effective for addressing foundation issues in various types of soil in Georgia, such as loose sandy soils or expansive clays. Helical piers provide strong support by anchoring the foundation to more stable ground, preventing further settling or shifting.
Push Piers
These piers are hydraulically driven deep into the ground until they reach bedrock or stable Georgia soil. This method is suitable for addressing issues in different soil types in Georgia, such as soft or compressible soils that cause foundation settling. By transferring the weight of the structure to more stable foundation soil, push piers help to lift and stabilize the home, preventing further movement and damage.
Wall Anchors
Wall anchors are used to stabilize and reinforce basement or retaining walls that are bowing or cracking due to pressure from the surrounding foundation soil. This solution involves installing anchors into the ground outside the affected wall and connecting them to steel plates on the interior wall. Wall anchors are effective in various foundation soil types in Georgia, especially in areas where the soil exerts excessive lateral pressure on the walls.
Go with AquaGuard for Foundation Soil Repair
Keeping your home safe and stable starts from the ground up. The foundation repair experts at AquaGuard Foundation Solutions are familiar with the complexities of working with difficult Georgia soil. Let our team handle your home’s unique foundation concerns and implement proven solutions to stabilize and restore your foundation. Contact us today for a free inspection.
Foundation Soil FAQs
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Regular inspections, at least annually, can help catch early signs of foundation damage. AquaGuard provides professional inspection services to identify potential problems before they escalate.
Concrete slabs crack due to problems with the soil beneath them. All soil inevitably erodes over time or gets washed out by water and rainfall. As it does, voids are formed below the concrete slab part of your Columbus home’s foundation and there’s nothing more to support its weight. When that happens, the concrete starts to sink and break at pressure points.
In order to lift the concrete, you should also fix the holes beneath it that have caused it to sink in the first place. That can’t be done with outdated methods for concrete lifting such as mudjacking. New methods that use polyurethane foam fix both the concrete and the soil issue by filling in the holes and providing a long-term solution to this issue.
Sometimes, the cause for the cracking is in the concrete itself and that’s what happens when the concrete isn’t sturdy enough. There’s no solution for this problem other than removing the concrete slab altogether and installing a new one out of reliable concrete that will provide better material.
The push pier. Since push piers require slightly smaller equipment, they are easily installed in both tighter urban areas. Helical piers are installed when helical piers don’t make the most sense for the structure.
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