We Repair Sinking and Settling Foundation Problems Near Rogers, Fayetteville, Springdale

Regain Your Properties Value By Repairing Foundation Sinking & Settlement Issues

Foundation settlement is common in Arkansas home's when changes occur in the soil underneath your foundation; resulting in weak soils not capable of supporting the weight of the home.

You don't have to live with those unwelcoming wall and floor cracks anymore. Foundation Specialties LLC, is your local expert foundation repair company, specializing in permanent foundation solutions and services. Foundation settlement damage is commonly linked with the soil surrounding the home structure.

Tell-tale signs of settlement damage:

• Stair-step cracks in brick foundation walls
• Chimneys leaning or tilting away from the home
• Cracks and gaps in windows & doors
• Hard to open - jamming doors and sticking windows
• Drywall and stucco cracks

Foundation Specialties LLC Can Properly Identify and Repair Your Foundation Settlement Issues

Our foundation repair contractors understand why homes have foundation settlement issues, what can be done to fix it and how to prevent further foundation settlement problems from "arising". At Foundation Specialties LLC, we permanently stabilize your home by installing galvanized steel foundation piers that extend beneath your foundation, contacting strong supporting soils.

Your Home May Have a Foundation Settlement Problem

A settling foundation can go unnoticed for months and in some cases years before a crack is discovered within the foundation. The long-term damage associated from foundation settlement depends on how long the issue is ignored, leading to more severe foundation problems.

Common Foundation Settlement Issues

When a home experiences foundation settlement many indications will become visible and noticeable. Below are some common ways to notice foundation settlement within a household.

Stair-Step Cracking

Stair-step cracking is a common form of foundation settlement usually scene in brick and concrete block walls. Stair-step cracks are one of the most certain signs of foundation settlement occurring within a home.

Widened or uneven vertical cracks are likely to occur as settlement continues, causing wall sections to tilt away from each other, demonstrating severe wall displacement.

Beware of stair-step cracks that are wider at the top of the breakage rather than at the bottom, this type of movement indicates advancing settlement.

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Tilting Chimneys

One of the most dramatic signs of foundation settlement a homeowner can see is a tilting chimney. Chimneys are the heaviest structure of a property some can weigh up to tens of thousands of pounds!

Chimneys are often built on footing separately from the house foundation. When the soil below the chimney's footing isn't strong enough to hold the weight, the chimney sinks, causing a tilt.

More information about tilting, leaning chimney repair.

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Damaged Windows & Doors

If a foundation issue is causing your home's windows and doors to stick or jam, then it's a safe bet to say the problem is some form of settlement.

Windows and doors are the weakest part of your structured wall so visible damage and limited functionality will likely accompany any settlement near your foundation. Signs of settlement in windows and doors include: cracks forming around the corners, separation from framing, sticking + jamming, and more.

More information about sticking windows and doors.

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Slab Floor Cracking

Cracks in your concrete floor slab may form as a form of foundation settlement. Soil disruption may cause the floors to sink or lift independently of the foundation walls. Often time's foundation settlement affects the floors of your foundation and not the foundation walls.

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Drywall Cracks

Typical drywall cracks during foundation settlement are commonly located at the weakest part of a building's structure; which, generally are the corners of doors and windows and along drywall seams. Drywall cracks can also be a sign of sinking crawl space supports, sinking floors, and heaving floors. Cracks will often show larger and more obvious separation in the home's upper levels.

We Can Properly Solve Your Foundation Settlement Problems Permanently

Here at, Foundation Specialties LLC, we install foundation piers to permanently stabilize and restore a failing foundation. Our contractors use our warrantied foundation piers to restore foundations damaged by issues related to foundation settlement and weak or poor supporting soils.

We offer several different types of foundation piers to repair foundation settlement; each one of our piers are designed to address a specific kind of foundation problem. We install three different kinds of foundation piers: push piers, helical piers, and slab piers.

Push piers are designed with heavy-duty steel, and are connected to your foundation by a steel bracket.

Each pier is driven deep below your home to strong supporting soils that can bear the weight of your structure.

Foundation Push Piers

Foundation push piers are researched and designed by our headquartered company Supportworks. Our push piers are created with galvanized steel, which allows for long-term strength and corrosion resistance. Their purpose is to attach to your foundation and extend far below the structure to transfer the weight of your home onto competent, load-bearing bedrock. 

After the foundation footing is exposed, a section of the foundation footing is cut to attach to each pier's bracket. This is possible all year-round from either inside or outside of your foundation.

Heavy duty steel foundation brackets are then secured to the foundation's footing, and tubular pier sections are hydraulically driven through each bracket.

Once all the push piers have been installed under the foundation, the push piers will work together, transferring the weight of the structure to the strong compact soils by the bedrock. Push piers; provide the best opportunity to life your home back to its original, level position.

More about installing foundation push piers.

Read about our push pier system.

Illustration of foundation helical piers stabilizing a home.

The Supportworks' Helical Pier system uses rugged steel galvanized helical piers to advance deep into the earth's soil, transferring the weight of your home onto stable load-bearing strata or bedrock.

Helical piers are installed similarly to push piers, they are attached to the foundation by mounting a bracket. They are mechanically advanced in the ground with rotating blades.

Foundation Helical Piers

A foundation helical pier owes its name to the helical plates welded to the pier shaft. These plates help to pull the pier into the soil during installation and provide anchoring strength as the weight of the foundation or structural element is transferred to the pier.

During the installation, a section of the foundation footing is exposed and cut for each bracket. Next, round-shaft helical piers are mechanically "screwed" into the soil. Once the helical pier has been advanced into the soil, a foundation bracket is secured to the footing.

Helical piers have a great deal of versatility for stabilizing and restoring foundations and masonry elements.

More about installing foundation helical piers.

Read about our helical pier system.

The solution to a settling concrete slab is Foundation Supportwork's Slab Pier System.

Our system is warrantied to stabilize a sinking, settling foundation slab.

Slab Pier Systems

Our foundation slab pier utilizes steel pier underpinning sections that are installed deep into the soil under the slab to transfer the weight of the slab to competent strata. Once the straight steel piers are installed, you can also lift the slab back to a level position.

Installation of the Supportworks' Slab Pier System allows you to fix your settled slab quickly, without the need to remove the existing slab and any walls in the area. A slab bracket is assembled underneath the concrete slab, and steel tubes are hydraulically driven down through this bracket assembly.

When the slab piers have reached competent soils, the weight of the slab is transferred through the piers to load-bearing soils below. If possible, the slab is lifted back to level position.

At the end of the installation, grout is pumped under the slab to fill any voids, and all cored holes in the slab are restored with new concrete for a clean, professional look.

Slab piers are not designed or used for supporting foundation walls or repairing damage caused by foundation heave. Slab pier solutions are permanent solutions for your home. Installations can be performed year round and do not require the use of heavy equipment.

Read about our slab pier system.

What You Should Not Do to Repair Foundation Settlement Problems

Certain home improvement methods work better than others based on the project and specific home. Alternatively, some home improvement methods barely work at all. As a matter of fact, many of our foundation repair jobs at Foundation Specialties LLC, are actually just fixing the unsuccessful repairs of other contractors.

In business since 1989, our experiences in the foundation repair field have helped us eliminate ineffective foundation repair approaches. Below are three "fixes" that our company does NOT recommend:

Total Foundation Replacement

What is it? With total foundation replacement, the soil is first excavated from around your foundation walls. Then, the house is jacked up and the slab floor and foundation walls are removed. Finally, the foundation is rebuilt and the soil is placed.

Why this doesn't work. Not only is replacement extremely disruptive and expensive, the real problem is that it doesn't address the issue. The foundation isn't the problem; the soil is the problem. You've simply built a new foundation in the same troublesome soil, so you can expect that your new foundation will 'break' just like the old one.

Many homeowners feel obligated to replace their foundation as opposed to repair their foundation because they don't know any better. Their mentality to "repair" their foundation is to remove and replace their old foundation with a brand new structure. However, without addressing the problem that caused the foundation issue in the first place, homeowners find themselves dealing with the same problem years later.

Foundation Specialties LLC, your locally owned foundation repair contractor, identifies and  addresses all of your foundation and structural problems. Our company offers services with fully warrantied solutions that will fix your problem once and for all.

Concrete underpinning failed to stabilize this house.

Concrete Underpinning

What is it? With the concrete underpinning approach, soil from around the foundation is excavated, larger concrete footings are poured beneath the existing footings. Once the concrete has cured, the soil is back-filled.

Why this doesn't work. Most of the time, concrete underpinning does not extend past the 'active zone' and beyond the troubled soils. In other words, the soil beneath these newly beefed-up footings may still be moving, causing the home above to continue to move.

Additionally, concrete shrinks as it cures, potentially creating small gaps between the new footing and the old one. Open gaps beneath a home are never a good thing.

When concrete underpinning is used a solution and the problem continues, it is much more expensive to repair as all of the added concrete will need to be removed and re-supported by a new, more substantial foundation system.

Concrete piers are too big and blunt to be accurately driven deep into foundation soils, so they usually don't extend to competent supporting soils.

Concrete Piers

What is it? To install concrete piers under a home, the soil surrounding the foundation will first need to be excavated. Short 6"-8", blunt concrete cylinders are pushed into the soil on top of one another and are held together by a wire. Shims are then placed on top of the uppermost concrete cylinder, and the soil is then back-filled.

Why this doesn't work. The blunt concrete cylinders are wide in diameter (about 6 to 8 inches), making it difficult to push the sections deep into the ground and past the troubled soil. There is also nothing to guide the direction of the pier, so they may not be installed straight. Finally, although concrete is a strong material, we've all seen concrete crack and break under pressure and during changes in temperature. Just take a look at all of the cracks in concrete streets and parking lots! If concrete piers were a great idea, all manufacturers of foundation repair products would offer them. Instead, only a few companies struggle with this approach.

We Restore Settling Foundations in Arkansas Neighborhoods

Foundation Specialties LLC, can identify and repair any home foundation issue you may be having with settling or sinking foundations. We offer a wide variety of foundation repair solutions that are fully warrantied and can permanently fix your foundations for good. Our products and solutions have been tested and proven effective throughout North America through our network of foundation repair contractors, Supportworks.

If your home is experiencing any structural cracks or other problems related to your foundation, contact us, Foundation Specialties LLC. We offer free, written foundation repair estimates, to all Arkansas homeowners in need. Included in our Free Estimate, one of our foundation specialists will visit your home and conduct a thorough on-site inspection of your property, plus a personal consultation of repairs needed. To set-up a Free Estimate appointment with one of our specialists, call or e-mail us today!

We proudly serve the Greater Fayetteville area including: Fayetteville, Rogers, Springdale, Mountain Home, Fort Smith, Harrison, Van Buren, Bella Vista, Alma, Bentonville.

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