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Making Documents of Concrete Risk Assessment Saves Time and Money

Foundation is the base of every house that holds the walls to make a safe home. Its importance is so much that it needs servicing every year to maintain its strength. Foundation can be of slab or pier and beam, but the material used has to be good so that it can hold and maintain the balance.

Moreover, the ground on which your house is settled plays a major role. If the soil particles are tight and concrete your house is stable, the moment particles loosen up it starts sinking below, which makes the slope uneven and you can observe cracks on walls and warps on doors and windows. That is why you need servicing for concrete repair.

When you hire an expert, they examine your entire house looking for every potential problem that can be dangerous in future. There are different types of cracks usually observed. Some are active while others are dormant. You can see rapid changes in active cracks where they get wide and increase day by day, but dormant cracks break through slowly and are hardly noticeable.

The criticality of any crack can be determined depending upon its width and depth. Here are some that are categorized accordingly –

  • Plastic shrinkage cracks are uneven and short, which happens generally when upper concrete dries before the lower one.
  • Crazing or map cracking is a shallow crack that occurs on the exterior of concrete. However, they aren’t dangerous because it cracks the upper surface of concrete.
  • Hairline cracks are just like hairline fracture which are thin line but damages the root deeply. They can deepen further when the concrete starts to settle.

  • Pop outs are observed when the concrete dries and a portion of it expands to protrude from surface.
  • Scaling is another type of crack that happens when water seeps in before the concrete dries. When concrete freezes it pushes a piece out. This also happens when excess water or air remains after the finishing of concrete.
  • Spalling is frequently seen when lot of pressure is applied from below the surface. When construction of joints are improper it creates pressure which exposes large metals underneath.

Foundation repair is an expensive task, but it is important to avoid major damages in future. There might be small cracks which you can repair by filling urethane in it, but there can also be certain damages that are more than a crack. It is therefore imperative, to get in touch with an engineer to bring back your house in good shape.

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