Cracks in basement walls. Pictures added

[K. L. McReynolds]

In the last three years, our basement has developed three cracks. Two are quite long(6 feet or more) but less than 1/4" gap.

The other is only two feet long, but almost 3/8" at the widest.

I researched and found Crack Pack(Simpson Strong Tie company) is the best DIY repair for the narrow cracks.

Am in the middle of the repair(taking a dust break), but will have pictures and report later.

Biggest problem is a previous owner had DryLock applied(about 1/8" thick) to the walls----and I have to grind that down to bare concrete.

Cracks:




Wall coating removed:



Injections adapters epoxied to wall:



Injecting epoxy:


Product is not cheap($145.00 for the kit shown):



Needs 24 hours to set up. The kit did not complete the shorter of the two cracks, so will order two more. Still less expensive than having a company out to do basically the same thing.

[pprobus]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but are you talking about concrete block walls or poured concrete walls? If the former, I assume the cracks are in the mortar joints?

Paul

[K. L. McReynolds]

Poured walls.

I have cleaned off the DryLoc and primer and attached the injection ports. Waiting for the epoxy to set to inject the Crack epoxy.

[jteneyck]

THanks for taking the time to post this. I have a couple of small cracks in my poured foundation wall. This might be just the solution. I look forward to seeing your final result and opinions. I used Simpson StrongTie epoxy to set retrofit bolts in my deck piers. It worked really well and is crazy strong.

John

[paulmaine]

Settling of a foundation can cause cracks. You might at the same time notice that a door shuts tightly and the door may have to be planed. Some marks in a poured wall look like cracks but were left from the original work.

I am not an expert but this is from my personal experiences.
In some cases the crack can go through the foundation and let water through. When that happens the crack can be dug out on the outside and be repaired. A Mason is often called upon for that work. This might be in the $1000 dollar range-digging can be done by hand.

A crack in the basement can also develop near a chimney

[K. L. McReynolds]

Most cracks are caused by settling, be they in foundations or sheetrock interior walls.

In our case, the house was built in 1965. I bought it in 2006. There were no cracks in any walls.

The cracks in question seem to be caused by outside pressure, caused by several years of very dry weather and in the last three years, very wet(winter and summer) show/rains.

The soil around the foundation is largely clay. Five years ago, the yard was so dry, there were huge cracks in the yard, up to a couple inches wide. Then came above average snows and springs with 10-20 inches of rain. The house is downhill from two blocks of homes to the east.

Three years ago, a huge snow melted in three days, and flooded my septic tank and two neighbors as well.

All the cracks are wider inside than outside. And they are on the east wall and north wall. No cracks on the west/south(both these are downhill side of house).

[jteneyck]

Besides fixing those cracks, it sounds like you need to develop a plan to put in some drainage. Otherwise, what's to prevent more cracks and perhaps bigger problems in the future? I've also read that with heavy clay soil you need to water close to the house when it's really dry to prevent the soil from shrinking away from the foundation.

I had water coming down the slope and against my house from snow melt and heavy rains. My sump pump ran almost constantly during those times and if it had died my basement would have flooded. Over two years, I had a swale bulldozed about half way up the slope to carry off some of the surface water, and I installed about 300 feet of drain line in my backyard, one run near the house, one further away. My sump pump hardly runs now.

John

[K. L. McReynolds]

The yard is swaled. The problem was assisted by a rather large sweet gum tree growing on the northeast corner of the foundation(about 8 feet away from the east corner. That tree is now history.

I did water the foundation, probably not enough. The differences between the dry spells and the wet were rather large.

I waited for over a year---hot and cold seasons to see if the cracks got bigger.

They have not. The soffits are 2 feet wide, a non wind driven rain never gets to the foundation. Gutters are clean and working properly. The down spout on the northeast corner emptied into a french drain, which is plugged, to the drain is now out away from the house(lying on top of the ground and draining away from the foundation.

Soil is sloped away from the foundation. Last two normal rains showed no leaks into the basement. One really hard deluge(neighbor had 6" in her rain gauge) with 50-60 mph gusts caused a leak in the north wall where I found a metal window has come loose from the foundation. Will clean and epoxy that back in place.

Sump pump is tied into the basement drain(below the septic drain line), it only runs when the water from the drain causes it to run. The former leaks went into that drain.

[jteneyck]

Good to see you've got all the bases covered. Not many have such a thorough understanding or have addressed the issues as thoroughly as you.

Look forward to your review of the epoxy system after it's all done.

John

[clockman]

I like the duck mural?