During times of drought or plentiful rain, Houston’s Gumbo Soil will expand and contract, and in the process it takes your foundation for a ride. The traditional method was to use jackhammers to fix it. It was messy, inconvenient, and compromised the structural integrity of your slab. Well, there is an alternative method.
Tunneling leads to better foundation repairs
“Homeowners just do not want someone coming in with a jackhammer inside their home,” says Du-West Foundation Repair’s Kenny Dutton. “The tunnels we do, we dig by hand. We have a man down in a hole. He digs a three foot by three foot hole and starts working away under a foundation.”
Then, tunnels are dug under the home until they reach the problem. That allows enough room to repair plumbing, if that’s an issue under a home, and install piling to pick up the interior part of a slab.
Piling up your home
The pilings under your home during foundation repair rely more on skin friction on the side of it than the bottom.
“We’ll push those down six-inch wide one-foot concrete sections just as deep as we can go until they stop going down and the structure starts lifting up,” Kenny says. “Anyone who’s had a foundation repair done by jackhammering through the slab will always tell me that they can’t believe this was in existence.”
From a structural standpoint, tunneling is better because there’s no need to weaken the slab by breaking a hole and point loading it next to a jackhammered hole.
“I can keep the full cohesion of the slab the way it was built, and come in underneath it and work on it,” adds Kenny. “I have a much stronger end product when I’m done.”
Easier access, a more convenient repair, and a longer lasting solution without using a jackhammer. It’s easier on you and your foundation. Foundation tunneling is a better repair method.
