Window Door Stuck in Ft Mitchell, Kentucky
Challenge
We were called out to a home in Ft Mitchell, Kentucky, to help a customer with a settling garage foundation. Their exterior window in the garage had became impossible to open, and the brick exterior had multiple large cracks as a result of the sinking foundation. Most times when a foundation settles, it does so unevenly. Windows and doors are often times the weakest part of an exterior wall, which makes them the first to crack at the corners. The other weak points in this wall were the mortar between the bricks, which also cracked as a result. The homeowner wanted a fix that would last forever, stabilize their garage, fix their windows, and close the cracks in the wall.
Solution
In order to fix the problem, we installed our helical pier system. Our piering systems were designed to transfer the weight of a home from problematic soil to load-bearing soil. In essence, soil found closer to the surface is more susceptible to shrinking and expanding due to changes in moisture content. On the contrary, soil that is found deep in the earth is insusceptible to shrinking or expanding due to the higher pressure. Because our piering system are able to reach load-bearing strata depths, we are able to effectively connect the base of a home to soil that won't ever expand or shrink.
Here is how we installed our piering system for this home:
- We excavated around the garage and made three cavities underneath the base of the home to make room for three piers.
- We then drilled the piers downwards until they hit load-bearing soil. We used a drivehead to drill the piers down. The pressure gauge on the drivehead was able to tell us when the piers eventually hit the load-bearing strata.
- Next, we connected the tops of the piers to the base of the home by using brackets, which conveniently latch onto the footing of the home.
- After stabilizing the home, we then lifted the home back up by using our hand-held hydraulic device. This process effectively closed the cracks and fixed the sticky window issue.
- Lastly, we covered the piers back up with dirt to conceal the entire system.
To learn more about this project, be sure to scroll through the photos attached to this case study. Better yet, we actually recorded a short video for this project, which you can find by clicking this link: Click here!
