Foundation trouble starts small and stays quiet

A soft floor almost always means the wood underneath has lost strength. In a Hampton Roads crawl space that's usually rot from years of ground moisture, sometimes with old termite damage layered on top. The framing goes spongy, the subfloor loosens from it, and you feel the problem long before you see it. The repair itself is carpentry. Cut out what's gone, sister or replace the joist, reset the girder, and set a proper post on a proper footing. Then deal with the water that caused it, or you'll be back under there in a few years doing it again.

• Floors that flex or dip in a hallway, bathroom or kitchen
• A sag or a hump you can feel with bare feet
• Rotted or crumbling floor joists, girders and sill plates
• A support post sitting on bare dirt, a stack of blocks or a rotted pad
• Old termite or water damage to framing that was never properly repaired
• Squeaks and movement over the same board every single time
• Insulation that has fallen out of the floor bays and is lying in the dirt
• A crawl space access door that's blocked, rotted or collapsed

Encapsulation stops ground moisture from evaporating up into your house. A sealed liner goes over the dirt and up the walls and piers, the vents get addressed, and a dehumidifier holds the space dry. That's the whole idea. It will not fix a plumbing leak, a failing gutter, or framing that has already rotted, so those get handled first. Done in that order, crawl space encapsulation takes care of musty air upstairs, hardwood floors that cup every summer, and mold that keeps coming back on the joists no matter how often it's wiped off.

• A musty smell that gets into the whole house by July
• Standing water or mud under the house after every heavy rain
• A torn, thin or completely missing plastic vapor barrier
• Mold or white growth on the underside of the floor
• Hardwood floors upstairs that cup, gap or buckle seasonally
• Air under the house that stays damp all summer no matter what
• A sump pit and pump so water has somewhere to go
• Insulation and duct work under the house that keeps getting wet

Width, direction and change matter far more than length. Thin vertical cracks in block or poured concrete are common and usually cosmetic. Stair-step cracks running through mortar joints, horizontal cracks, and anything wider than about a quarter inch are telling you something moved. The real question is whether it's still moving. Mark each end with a pencil, write the date next to the mark, and photograph it once a month. Six months with no change puts you in maintenance territory. Any growth means there's an active cause, and patching it before you find that cause just hides the evidence.

• Stair-step cracking through the mortar in a block or brick foundation
• A crack wide enough to slide a coin into
• Cracks that reopen every single time they get patched
• One corner or one side of the house that has visibly dropped
• Gaps opening up between brick veneer and a window or door frame
• Cracked or crumbling parging on the outside of the foundation
• Diagonal drywall cracks running up from the corners of doorways

Slab homes don't get soft floors, they get moisture and cracking. A lot of newer Hampton Roads housing was built slab on grade, so this comes up constantly in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach. The usual causes are water pooling against the house, a supply or drain line leaking under the concrete, or shrinkage cracks that were there from the day it cured. Flooring is where you notice first. A warm patch on a slab floor often means a hot water line is leaking under it, and that's a plumbing call before it's ever a concrete one.

• Tile or grout cracking along one straight line across a room
• Vinyl or laminate lifting, cupping or separating at the seams
• A warm or damp patch on a slab floor you can feel through socks
• A visible crack in the slab at the garage, patio or front stoop
• Water wicking up at the base of a wall on a slab
• An exterior slab, patio or stoop that has settled away from the house

A licensed structural engineer's stamp is required whenever the repair itself carries load. That covers bowing or leaning foundation walls, pier and underpinning design, helical and push pier layouts, and removing or altering anything load-bearing. The engineer specifies the repair, the permit gets pulled against that design, and the inspection is done against it too. Nobody should be quoting that work off a photo and a hunch. We'll tell you when you're in that territory on the first visit, because finding out later is how a job doubles in price and stalls for a month.

• A foundation wall that's bowing, leaning or pushing inward
• Piers or underpinning to stop a section of the house settling
• Taking out a wall, post or beam that's holding something up
• Adding load: a second story, a heavy tub, a wider opening
• Repairs a lender, buyer or insurance carrier wants documented
• Anything a home inspector wrote up as structural before a closing

Almost every foundation problem in this region is a water problem wearing a costume. Roof runoff dumping at one corner, downspouts that end six inches from the wall, and ground that slopes back toward the house do more damage than anything else on this page. All of that is cheap to correct. A downspout extension and some regrading cost a fraction of a drainage system, and they solve a real share of crawl space water on their own. We'd rather try the cheap fix first and be wrong than sell you the expensive one and be right. If we do end up digging, a VA811 utility locate comes first. It's free, it's required by law, and it takes a few days, so it goes on the schedule early.

• Downspouts that empty straight against the foundation wall
• Gutters overflowing at the same corner every storm
• Ground that slopes toward the house instead of away from it
• A crawl space vent or window well that fills up with water
• French drain installation to move water away from the footing
• Sump pump installation or sump pump repair where water has nowhere to go
• Mulch or soil piled up above the siding line
• A driveway or patio that drains back toward the house

We cover the seven cities, and the housing stock changes a lot between them. Norfolk and Portsmouth homes are typically 1960s, so those crawl spaces have had sixty years of moisture on original framing. Virginia Beach and Chesapeake stock is newer, and the calls there lean toward drainage, settlement at additions, and slab moisture. Suffolk is the newest and the most rural, with more well and septic work close to the house. Tell us the street and what you're seeing, and we'll usually know what we're walking into before we get there.

• Foundation repair in Virginia Beach, on crawl space and slab homes alike
• Crawl space repair in Norfolk and Portsmouth, where the framing is oldest
• Foundation repair in Chesapeake, mostly drainage and settlement at additions
• Crawl space encapsulation in Newport News and Hampton
• Foundation repair in Suffolk, including rural properties and outbuildings
• Crawl space moisture, drainage and dehumidification across all seven cities