We had a garage addition built 10 months ago , used icf blocks , and had a section of asphalt removed in front of garage doors and they pourd a slab bumping up to garage , it looks like the ground froze and the concrete rose and is buckling the siding , and also cracked a little bit of the concrete , was this preventable ? It looks like they pourd the concrete right up against the siding and even left some siding under the concrete , curious if this could of been prevented
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If the damage was in fact caused by frost heaving, I think a few inches of compacted drain rock under the slab and a perimeter drain (depending on slope and waterflow) would have prevented this damage.
Yeah, in a couple of different ways. As the previous poster suggested, better drainage below the concrete. Or not butting the siding directly to the ground - Why was that done? Is there no stem wall?
This is a good question, btw. I freelance edit the Ask the Experts department in the magazine and I'm thinking of using it.
I'm not sure how much fill you want to put under a driveway slab but here in the land of CLAY, 8-10" of base still isnt enough to keep my driveway slab from rising and falling more than two inches over the course of the seasons. Clay simply swells too much when wet and shrinks dramatically when dry to keep a slab on grade where it is put. I guess if you kept the ground underneath the slab consistently wet all of the time, you could keep it from moving...
having said that, my siding will never buckle like that because it doesnt extend down to the top of the slab but stops just below the sill plate with the remainder of the garage foundation showing.