I was at my bath remodel job today and overheard the foundation repairman speaking to the client, who obviously had slab problems. He told her that you should never water your ground around your slab. That soaker hoses were a terrible thing to use..that a dry, hard ground was dead and therefore would not move. “Don’t listen to what you hear about watering your ground around the slab ” he said. “Keep it as dry as you can.”
I just turned and walked away.
This city is currently having a onslaught of foundation problems: we have been in a semi-drought condition for three years now. I see a correlation.
what do you think?
Replies
I think that he right.
Just keep it dry ALL of the TIME.
Of course that also means during storms and wet weather. But ask him how to do that.
Otherwise it is easier to keep it wet all the time.
Where are you located? Texas?
yes Texas. My personal opinion is keeping it at a constant at all times.
Living in Texas now (Plano), but coming from the midwest, I had never heard of such a thing as "watering your foundation". Then one of my buddies had to pay about $9000 to fix his slab due to inadequate watering...
I did a lot of research on this when I came here to see how serious it actually is, and some of the literature stated that some soils in Texas expand to nearly twice their normal volume when wet. All of the recommendations I saw were to keep the soil damp at all times, and this becomes more critical during the summer when we will have our normal weather of no rain for 90 days. :~)
I would (and do) water my foundation...no problems yet...an interesting note is that I don't use soaker hoses at all, I just make sure that my sprinkler system keeps the ground SOMEWHAT damp...
Jamie
Are you talking about watering the grass around your foundation? Or "watering" the dirt to keep it from shrinking?
Or is it something else that I've missed entirely?
An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. -- Spanish proverb
Boss, I vistited a repo once and they had soaker houses around the foundation. Under further investigation on my part found the losing owner. He said the floor would straighten up when the foundation was watered, thus lifting it . Now I assume in this case they are talking about keeping it from cracking in the first place. Texas has unstable soil, but the poster hasnt said where he is at yet . I was under the thought that a floating slab was in line in some parts of texas. One poster had it right in saying that what in case of rain ? I can figgure a drought [ three years]would play havoc with unstable ground. Im not sure I would agree with the inspector , which Bob is trying to learn where its at , which might find that stable ground is there.
This cant be answered until the condition of the soil is known.
Tim Mooney
Thanks for the info. Never dealt with soil like that, and wasn't sure what was going on. Normal is just a setting on your dryer.