When Do You Need Underpinning Services for Your Commercial Building?

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Advice for Home Extensions, Additions and Adaptations

Thanks for checking out my blog! My name's Olivia, and I'll be sharing my advice about construction and contractors here. When my husband and I first decided to move in together, we didn't fall in love with any of the homes on the market so we decided to build our own. We learned a lot about construction and contractors during that time, but our journey wasn't over yet. Over the years, we've had multiple changes made to our custom home, including extensions to accommodate new babies, adaptations for in-laws moving in and even an outbuilding studio for my son's music production endeavours. As you can imagine, I've had to do a lot of research on home building over the years, and now I'd love to pass that advice on to anyone else who needs it. Look around—I'm sure you'll find something useful.

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When Do You Need Underpinning Services for Your Commercial Building?

28 August 2020
 Categories: Construction & Contractors, Blog


The structural integrity of your building determines its durability. If your building fails the strength test and you start noticing signs of foundation damage, you need professionals to fix the problem. Underpinning is a process used in repairing, strengthening, and increasing the depth of an existing foundation. The process helps to enhance a foundation that has been weakened by various factors such as water damage.

There are several ways to know when you need commercial underpinning services. This article highlights some of them.

Cracks on Your Walls

The appearance of cracks on the walls is one of the obvious signs of structural damage. They mostly start as small splits and slowly advance to become large cracks. Such cracks mostly start appearing inside your building, but you can sometimes see them on your building's exterior. When you start noticing cracks on your walls, get the experts to inspect them and find an ideal underpinning solution to the problem.

Sloping Floors

Most buildings have level floors. However, you might notice that your floors are sloping after some time. When this happens, check the foundation. Foundation settling is a significant problem that decreases floor strength and causes floors to slant on one side.

You might not experience significant problems if the floors dip towards the centre, but a slant towards one side shows there is a severe structural issue. If there is a slant on the floors, check whether your walls also have cracks, then get an expert assessment.

Building Leans to One Side

A building will only lean to one side when there is severe damage to its foundation. Complete settling of the foundation is likely to cause sagging and leaning of your commercial building. The easiest way to spot a leaning building is to see if the walls on one side are not on the same level as the others. Call the underpinning professionals immediately once you realise your building is leaning for timely intervention.

Sticking Windows and Doors

Another sign that your foundation has issues is when it becomes difficult to open your doors and windows. Sometimes, however, there could be other issues affecting your doors, such as a loose hinge or water damage. Get a professional to check if there could be other reasons that your windows and doors are sticking.

Once you notice any of these issues in your building, contact a company that offers underpinning services immediately. The experts will inspect your building to determine if it needs underpinning and the ideal underpinning method to use. Commercial underpinning will ensure your foundation regains its structural integrity.