What Indicates That Your House Needs Restumping?
Houses are unique and different in most neighbourhoods. They are built on places with different soil conditions. Therefore, you would expect a house to hold up well in some places while the foundation can weather and deteriorate faster in other places. Therefore, you should always be on the lookout for signs that will tell you when your house requires some foundational renovations. Restumping is one of the ways that such renovations are done. It refers the process of resetting and replacing the stumps, which are short, perpendicular structures often made using concrete, wood, or steel and used to hold the house on the ground. Failure to restump the house can make some sections of the house to collapse or worse; the whole house might come tumbling down. Here are the indications that your house needs restumping:
Sinking Walls
Walls that appear to be sinking gradually into the ground are an indication that you need to restump the house. It could be on one or several sides of the house, depending on the extent of the damage that has occurred to the stumps underneath. In brief, such walls show that the structure beneath is weak and has to be reinforced or replaced. If left in this state for a long time, the house will start to lean on one side because of the uneven distribution of the weight of the building on its supporting structures.
Continuous Cracks on the Interior Walls
If your interior walls are cracking, it does not necessarily have to be a problem with the quality of the materials used to make the wall. The problem may be foundational. The cracks are caused by the weight of the house, which exerts a force on the lower parts such as the walls and the floor. Since the stumps in the foundation do not offer adequate support to the walls, there is too much force exerted on the walls, forcing them to crack as a way of trying to distribute it. In such a case, you will have to restump the house before you start repairing the cracked walls.
Uneven Floors
A good floor should be flat and even, whether the floor is made of concrete or wood. However, your once normal floor might begin to slope towards one side of the house, or develop some sunken areas resembling shallow ditches. These are indications that the stumping underneath is rotting in some areas, forcing the floor to sink in places where the stumps are weak.