Can I do my own foundation home repairs?

The only type of foundation repair a homeowner should attempt is a leak in a poured cement structure.

The answer is possibly. It depends on the source of the problem.

For the most part you can say, there are three raw materials used in creating the basement or forming the basement. The first two are much more common than the third, but the original and oldest basements are based on concrete block. Newer basements are based on poured concrete. On the East Coast you will still see some stone foundation, but most foundations are either poured or block. Most houses built after the second half of the 20th century are poured. If it's a foundation, whether it is poured or concrete, the majority of problems are leaking problems, maybe water somehow keeps coming into the basement.


Now you can also have structural problems. Those are much more common in block than in poured walls. Now if it's the structural problem, you cannot do it yourself. If it's a concrete block basement, you should leave it to the professionals. The only basement that is practical to do yourself is the poured wall foundation, where the problem is that the foundation walls, not the floor, but the foundation walls have cracked and at least one of those cracks has water coming through.

We sell kits for that purpose, but again, I don't recommend that it should be done that way. I recommend that you bring in a water proofing contractor who can do crack ejections. And if he is willing to charge you less than 500 dollars, I think the homeowner is better off in most cases having him do it.


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