Preparing Your Home for Retirement

Does the foundation of your house show signs that it is giving out? Cracks on the walls, sticky door and windows, leaning walls and visibly damaged piling are all signs that your house needs foundation repair. 

A house underpinning contractor can strengthen and stabilise the foundation of your building so that its structural soundness is restored, but they will charge you for their services. Before you can start receiving and comparing quotes from different contractors for your underpinning job, it is important to have a clue about what typically influences underpinning costs.

Here is a look at some of the things that usually influence the cost of house underpinning.

Soil Testing

The structural load of your entire house is transferred to the soil. In simple terms, the soil on which your house stands carries the weight of the entire building.

Before your contractor can recommend the appropriate underpinning solution for your house, they will have to get the soil tested to determine its load-bearing capacity. This calls for the expertise of an independent soil testing specialist. The specialist will come to your home, take samples of the soil and have it tested at an off-site lab. They will then provide the contractor with a report that details their findings. 

The cost of the soil tests carried out prior to the underpinning work is usually included in the quote sent to you. 

Structural Engineering Work

House underpinning contractors usually also enlist the help of structural engineers to help them determine the structural loads of houses that require underpinning and the extent of damage caused to the foundations of the houses.

Underpinning contractors then use the structural engineers' findings to establish the proper footings and materials required for your house underpinning work. 

Underpinning Work

Once the soil has been tested and the structural engineering assessments have been performed, underpinning contractors can now commence repair on your house. The repair involves raising the existing foundation of your house and providing a strong, solid surface on which the foundation can rest on. 

Depending on the extent of foundation damage that has occurred, the contractor might have to do major excavation work, which may increase the cost of underpinning service considerably.

Damage to the foundations of houses and other buildings tends to exacerbate with time. If you don't attend to foundation damage early enough, you might have to perform major foundation repair work, which will be expensive. Seek out a house underpinning contractor at the earliest signs of foundation damage to avoid costly repairs.