What are the primary advantages and disadvantages to installing steel piers to address structural problems?

Olson Foundation Repair offers a range of solutions to address serious foundation problems, which may include installing piers, wall restraints, and other heavy-duty materials. These are the methods you use when you know there are problems like settling, wall movement, and other sources of instability. This article should provide a rudimentary understanding of pier installation for homes around Kansas City.

Pros for Steel Piers

There are many pros to installing steel piers. When your house experiences lots of vertical movement within the foundation wall, this is usually a key option.

This is where we go underneath the home footings (down to the bedrock), and install steel pipe. Once we hit the bedrock, we fix the pipe in between that and a bracket plate. This all hooks up to the frame of the house.

What are the warning signs for this problem?

You’ll probably notice windows and doors not closing right because the entire home is off balance. It’s also common to see floors shifted out of position or sheetrock damaged in various places. Our goal, when this happens, is to come to your home, make repairs that will restore stability, and give the foundation a “new memory” so to speak.

What does that mean?

The memory refers to the integrity of the foundation and the surrounding framework supporting your entire property. With a better foundation memory, following our repair services, you can fix those windows, doors, and sheetrock within a few months.

Cons for Steel Piers (Not Many)

There aren’t too many major drawbacks or cons to installing piers. You just have to make sure you don’t get “conned” into a project your home doesn’t need. Some foundation problems are easy to resolve with simpler solutions if there is just cosmetic damage.

When there’s any doubt, we like to consult a structural engineer to help us determine the soundness of the home foundation. This eliminates the guessing game of whether you need a full-blown excavation and heavy installation. Unfortunately, if you hire a less scrupulous contractor, they may pressure you into buying piers, when a simpler solution would suffice.

Don’t forget that the Kansas City area is notorious for heavy soil movement (the clay expands and contracts). Therefore, you could expect to find cracks or cosmetic damages on nearly every building, and not all of them have settling issues.

Other than that, pier installation might temporarily alter your exterior landscaping (bushes, gardens, mulch, etc.), but our team always tries to minimize this as much as possible.

What Should You Do If You Suspect Inward Wall Movement?

Your first move, when you suspect foundation trouble, should be to contact Olson Foundation Repair for a free home inspection. This gives us the chance to look over everything and diagnose the problem. Most of the time, inward wall movement is a downward shift, which leads to certain predictable problems, such as horizontal wall cracks.

Once we have a firm grasp of the problem, we can propose the best options for you to consider. Whenever there’s a more cost-effective measure, that’s what we prefer to do.

If the situation calls for installing piers or wall braces, we’ll assess things carefully and offer a detailed cost estimate. This means that you’ll know roughly what we’ll do, how long it will take, and the price involved. Don’t forget that all of our structural repair tasks come with lucrative service warranties (which transfer if you sell your home later).

Olson Foundation Repair: Kansas City’s Best for Pier Installation & Other Effective Solutions

We’ve built a solid reputation by offering dependable foundation repair, drainage solutions, and basement waterproofing for our Kansas City clientele. These foundation calamities do not have to last forever. Olson Foundation Repair is more than happy to help you explore solutions to a myriad of problems, including wall cracks, collapsed walls, bowing walls, leaks, and even flooded basements.

So, if you have substantial foundation trouble, contact us anytime for a free evaluation where we can explore resolutions like steel piers and other measures.