Seven signs
Choose what you are seeing
- Cracks in walls and brickStair-step cracks in brick, and diagonal cracks spreading from door and window corners.
- Sticking doors and windowsA latch that misses, a gap that tapers along the top of a door, a sash that binds.
- Sloping or bouncy floorsA room that tilts toward one wall, a dip along a hallway, a floor that springs underfoot.
- Foundation crack repairCracks in a slab, a garage floor or a basement wall, and how sealing differs from fixing the cause.
- Bowing basement wallsA block wall with a long horizontal crack, a bulge, or a top edge tipping inward.
- Crawl space repairTilting piers, a sagging main beam and soft joists under the floors of a crawl space house.
- Sinking ground and sinkholesA new dip in the yard, soil that keeps dropping by the wall, a hole that opens after rain.
Reading the signs together
One sign is a question. Several in one corner is a pattern.
A single hairline crack or one stubborn door has a long list of ordinary causes. What foundation companies and engineers look for is agreement: a stair-step crack outside, a tapered gap over the door just inside it, and a floor that falls toward that same corner.
Other things worth mentioning on the phone even though they have no page of their own: a chimney or front steps pulling away from the house, a porch slab that has dropped at one end, gaps opening between the countertop and the wall, and rainwater that stands against the foundation for a day or more.
Dates help more than adjectives. If you can say the crack was not there last spring, or that it grew during the dry weeks of September, you have told the inspector something a tape measure cannot.
One phone call
Speak with a foundation repair company near Murfreesboro
Mention the crack, the dip or the lean, name the room, and give the month you first spotted it. Whoever picks up belongs to a Middle Tennessee foundation outfit whose only tie to this website is the referral. They can pencil in an inspection and follow it with a written price.
A house that is cracking as you listen, a wall on the point of failing, gas in the air: everybody outside first, then 911 and the gas company.
Expect the call to be recorded. Two short pages cover the rest: who pays for referrals and what becomes of call details.