The foundation of your home is a very important thing. After all, your home would have very little structural integrity if not for its foundation. Without foundation, your home would not be particularly well supported at all, to say the very least, and would likely develop a whole slew of problems. Therefore, investing in the quality of your home’s foundation is something that should start at the very beginning of your tenure as a home owner. After all, it’s recommended that up to 15% of the total cost of your home be put into the foundation and the foundation alone. At the very least, you should be putting around 8% of your home’s cost towards the foundation. Investing early on will help to ensure that the quality stays high.
Of course, choosing the right kind of foundation is a must and fortunately, there are a number of different kinds to choose form. For one thing, basement and crawl space foundations are common throughout many regions of the country, and especially in the midwest. Having a home with a basement is ideal if you are in need of extra storage, and finished basements can even provide some extra living space. Some people will even choose to build in an extra bedroom to their basement spaces, allowing for a renter or even just an ever-expanding family. Basements can also make ideal shelters in areas where tornadoes threaten or are even particularly prominent. For many people, having a basement is even just a safety matter.
But not all places in this country are ideal for basements. In fact, the quality of the soil found throughout the United States often limits the types of foundations that can be reasonably utilized. For instance, slab foundations must often be used in parts of the country where soil is porous and prone to erosion. Much of the state of Florida is testament to this, and you are unlikely to find many, if any, basement or even crawl space foundations there. Fortunately, the slab foundation is widely used in its own right, making it more than ideal in many ways for such parts of the United States.
If you do have a basement or crawl space foundation, there are certain precautions that you will have to take. For one thing, you will need to guard against flooding, as more than 95% (around 98%, to be just a bit more exact) of all basements will flood at one point in time or another. This means that up to 37% of all home owners will unfortunately experience damage as a result of flooding – up to 14,000 people dealing with flooding related damage throughout the course of the single day. All in all, this is a high number indeed.
But there are most certainly steps that can be taken to guard against this flooding damage. For one thing, plants can be planted at least two feet away from the foundation, a relatively small change that can have an impressive impact. In addition to this, you should also make sure not to plant your plants too deeply, as this is something that can lead to interference of the roots with the foundation, another thing that should be avoided at all costs.
The proper placement of your gutters can go a long way too. In fact, you can do a lot for your foundation simply by placing your gutters to divert water at least 10 feet away from it. In addition to this, the proper cleaning and care of your gutters will help to prevent issues not just with your foundation, but for your home as a whole.
And being on the lookout for other types of damage, such as termite damage, is also important. You might not think of termite damage when you first think of your foundation, but termite damage can be quite pronounced indeed, to say the very least. Foundation termite damage is not uncommon, but foundation termite damage repair is more than possible. Having routine inspections of your foundation can help to spot termite damage, and a home foundation repair service through a foundation contractor can help to eliminate all signs of termite damage.
