6 Signs Your Home Needs a Floor Leveling
Our homes are supposed to be perfectly designed to be stable with a good and level foundation. The foundation determines the stability of the house as it contributes maximum to cracks in the walls and ceilings and even controls the plumbing stability.
If you find yourself with a lot of issues in these aspects, chances are that leveling the foundation would help resolve these problems. Many companies help in leveling your floors efficiently. You can visit Egaliseer.nl for more information. Hence, this is when you should consider leveling your floor.
What are the causes of the floor not being level?
Uneven foundations can often occur because of the settling of the foundation. This happens either because the soil is not filled properly under the foundation settings or because of the use of expansive soils under the foundation that changes texture and shape based on the climatic conditions. This leads to the gradual sliding of the foundation making your floor slope. If your house is situated near large trees, their roots can often cause foundation slips. This happens because the trees use up the moisture in the soil and can change the texture. These are a few common reasons for your floor requiring leveling.
What are a few signs that your floor would need leveling?
1. You observe uneven floors
This is quite obvious and generally, when you think there’s a sloping feel to the place, it most often would be sloping. You can observe this when placing furniture, or trying to keep something steady. This can be quite dangerous for a lot of furniture as sloping floors can be very unstable. Many people’s vases and mantelpieces have crashed and broken by this phenomenon. This can be detected by a tape measure sometimes. The easiest way to confirm this would be to place a marble on the floor. If you see it definitively move to one side, your floor is slanting and would need leveling.
2. You observe cracks along the exterior and the interior of your home
A sloping floor means that the walls and verandah of your house would be under pressure. This leads to a visible cracking all across the interiors and exteriors of your house. The imbalance of your roof and floor can often ruin your walls and corners. You can either see large tell-tale signs or even small subtle cracks between bricks and maybe near the plaster. Many people have said that their wood panels have been damaged over time because of this and there would be uncontrollable strain cracks on the ceilings too.
3. You see wide gaps in the mortar joints
Mortar joints are technically mortar-filled expansion joints that are gaps between the bricks or blocks. A sloping floor often gradually pulls apart the mortar with strain and this can cause wide gaps. As time goes, these gaps can be quite inconvenient and ugly. It would also go against the aesthetic of the house too. Hence, apart from repairing it right there, it is also important to analyze the reason for the cracks. This analysis is important as such gaps can be one of the early signs that the foundation is settling and it would be best to check your flooring immediately.
4. The house had multiple repairs
When the stable flooring itself starts sloping, then it would lead to rupture of pipelines and interference in the installation of many implements. This requires multiple repairs and if you have a lot of repairs to do, or you find out that your previous owner had to repair a lot, then it is best to get the floor checked. People often tend to just wonder why they have a lot of repairs and they blame it on bad luck or mishandling of the installations. However, it could be because of foundation settling. If you are new tenants, check for crack patching, latch replacements, or moving frameworks. This would give you a clue to check the floor level.
5. You see that the windows and doors aren’t closing properly
When the floor slopes, the doors, and windows get affected as their levels also get imbalanced. This makes it very hard to open and close doors and windows as it gets stuck because of the angle. This is another sign if you observe that all your doors and windows have this problem. It would be wise to immediately get the foundations checked. This would be detrimental to the windows and doors in the long run, as it can cause the frames to bend and the glass can crack.
6. You can see a sloping chimney
If you finally observe your chimney completely slope to one side of the house has cracked around the chimney, this would be the right time to get your floor and foundation checked. This can especially occur if your chimney shares the foundation with the rest of the house. In extreme cases, the whole house would appear mildly sloping when seen from a distance. This can be quite hard to rectify, hence finding the foundation settling in time is very important. Hence, understanding the tell-tale signs is very important.
Conclusion
Floor leveling is an important aspect to invest in if your foundation starts settling. This is essential if your floor has started sloping and there is damage happening within your house. The damage includes cracks along the walls, ceilings, and corners, windows, and doors not shutting correctly, and unstably settled furniture. This can cause a lot of long-term damage and inconvenience to the homeowners and can be dangerous too.
Often, house leveling contractors can be consulted who would check for slopes or unstable foundations and they would address the issue correctly. You can even get your floor leveling done within the budget that you want and the companies dealing with this can get the right materials for the job. Floor leveling can take about a few weeks, but after it is done, you will not have to worry about damage and instability of the floors again.
