Before & After Photos

Keeping your basement foundation strong is very important. If your basement walls begin to bow or crack it can lead to severe damage to your home. In this Brevard, NC home the basement walls had begun to bow in. To solve this problem the All-Dry of the Carolinas team was able to install CarbonArmor strips. This CarbonArmor system is a fiber reinforced polymer that is 10 times stronger than steel. The system is extremely flexible and can be used easily against all basement walls. This strip absorbs the pressure that is pushing out from the wall. Along with all the foundation benefits, the CarbonArmor strips are easier to paint and are easily concealable.

This home had been suffering from some pretty serious foundation issues for awhile before they decided to call a professional to help with the issues. When our System Design Specialist went out to the home he noticed several large cracks on both the inside and outside of the home. While this seemed to be a huge issue (and would be if not taken care of), however our Specialist was able to figure out a solution with just a few push piers.

The main crack that can be seen in the before photo is a stair-step crack on the back wall. This was a pretty large crack, between a half inch and an inch wide, but it could certainly be closed up through the help of our push piers. There is also some other minor cracking along the left-hand wall, which is difficult to see because of the angle of the photo. 

This after picture is not as clear to see because the items that had been along the walls of the basement were moved back into place, however there has been quite a bit of progress made between the two photos. The large crack along the back wall was brought back towards its original position and the crew re-grouted the crack. The crack on the left hand wall was also fixed and the same was done for it. 

If you've looked at any other content on our site, you may have seen wall anchors in action. This before and after is going to be a little different than some of the others. This is going to look at more of the cleanup, then the installation of the wall anchors. For this particular project, we had the crew had to install three wall anchors under the garage floor.

The "before" picture shows what it looked like once the crew had cut out the sections for the wall anchors to be installed, and had already excavated the dirt down to the level needed to install the wall anchor. As you can see, this can be a very messy process, especially in a garage. We always do our best to keep wherever we are working clean (as we can), and always clean-up after ourselves! In this garage, there was a tarp laid out to hold as much of the dirt as possible, to keep the floor from getting too dirty.

The "after" picture is a much different story than from before. The biggest difference is the fact there aren't deep holes in the middle of the garage or a huge pile of dirt. Jokes aside, our crew filled the holes back with the dirt, then poured some new concrete back into the holes. Although there will be a few "discolored" areas in this garage, it is all worth it in the end. First off, the only other option would be to rip up the garage floor and completely replace it, and two; the cuts must be made so that the outside wall doesn't get any worse.

This homeowner was worried that part of their home wasn't being supported how it should be, unfortunately, they were right about that. When our Service Design Specialist Stuart went out to his home, he saw that the home's foundation was starting to crack under the pressure of the extended part of the home. The extra part was only held up by a few thick, wooden beams.

The "before" picture shows what the area looked like before our crew was able to get out to the home and do any work. While it is difficult to actually notice any sagging or other problems in this photo, there are a few places where the wooden posts can be seen through the lattice. While these posts may have worked for awhile, it was only a matter of time before the ground started to shift and these posts caused more problems than they solved.

The "after" photo shows the same area but with the five SmartJacks installed in order to support this part of the home. These SmartJacks were able to provide ample support to this overhanging part of the home. A large part of this job that isn't really seen at all is what we call "supplemental beam", which is basically an extra beam that gives the SmartJacks a connected area in order to disperse the weight evenly between all five SmartJacks.

Foundation repair is an extremely common problem that we get called out for. However, this homeowner had a crack in their basement wall that was one of the bigger ones that we had seen in awhile. It was impressive that the crack in the wall was able to get as big as this before the homeowner gave us a call to come out and look at their basement. This crack was easily 1-2 inches wide, if not more.

The "before" photo shows what the crack in the wall looked like before any work was done on the basement. As you can see, this crack is very wide, much wider than the rest of the cracks in this basement, and many other homes that we have installed push piers on. Again, the fact the homeowner allowed the crack to get this large is incredible. However, the more impressive thing was how well the push piers brought the crack back together.

The "after" photo is almost unbelievable compared to the before. The push piers did an incredible job on bringing the wall back together. They were able to take a crack with at least a one-to-two inch gap all the way up and reduce the gap to almost nothing. After the two sides of this rift were pushed close to each other, our crew went back and resealed the crack, which will look almost just like the wall when it dries out.