Description
Your house is covered with cracks due to a soil problem, and you want to stop them. Let's first look at the different causes of cracking:
Cracking is often the result of a foundation problem. These reasons can be the result of complex natural phenomena such as:
- drought, also called soil desiccation (water loss from soils), is mainly encountered in sensitive clay soils. This results in voids which, when filled with water, will allow the soil to settle, and consequently, cracks will appear on the house.
- A tree too close to a house, whose roots will influence the water table level, and therefore, as in the case of drought, will allow the soil to settle, and therefore the house to crack.
- So-called thixotropic soils whose water and vibrations (roads, industrial machinery, etc.) will modify the mechanical behavior of the soils in place. These types of soils will literally liquefy and their mechanical resistance will drop. This phenomenon will cause the house to crack. Examples of thixotropic soils: water-logged sand (Mont Saint Michel bay), bentonite (clay)...
- Soil consolidation: when the soil is subjected to an additional load. Example: for 100,000 years, your land looked like a cattle park. Today, you are building your house whose foundations exert considerable weight. Conclusion, the soil will settle!
- Terrain structure: the nature of soils can be different under the foundation points of a building. In this case we will have differential settlements because the foundations experience a non-homogeneous soil response to the load. It must be understood that the soil dictates its settlement and that the foundations (and therefore the construction) follow the soil.
Non-exhaustive list...
