It’s fall here in Central Texas, y’all! You’re a little worried about the condition of your foundation after a few rough years of extreme weather. We had a drought, snowmageddon, another worse drought, a mega-freeze, a bizarrely rainy summer, and now, a relatively dry fall.
You’re trying to stay on top of home maintenance for the home that you love and want to know what you can do to care for your foundation.
At Anchor Foundation Repair, we love homeowners who love their homes and care about you wanting to care for your foundation. It’s a great time to get some work done outside before the temperatures dip and “winter” sets in. As a born and raised Texan and foundation repair contractor, I know just what you need to prep your foundation for the colder months.
In this article, we will cover tasks to do and checks to conduct each fall to put your foundation in the best position for optimal health. You can easily weather our often unpredictable and somewhat extreme climate conditions with these tips for your peace of mind.
Fall Maintenance Tips for Any Foundation Type
Let’s get right to the good stuff. These tips apply to any home foundation type, whether you have a slab-on-grade foundation, a pier and beam foundation, or a block and base type crawl space foundation. We don’t typically have residential basement foundations around here, but if you did, these tips would still be appropriate for you.
If one of these doesn’t apply to you, skip it and go to the next item.
- Inspect gutters for needed repairs and clean out excess leaves and debris (after the leaves are done falling on your property),
- Inspect, clean out, and if needed repair downspout extensions,
- Evaluate drainage and drainage systems to make sure all are flowing properly,
- Check for low spots around your home and in your yard, fill in if needed,
- Conduct a visual inspection of the exterior of your home looking for typical signs of foundation settlement.
- You’re looking for things like:
- Stair-step brick cracks
- Separations around windows
- Brick frieze separations
- Other horizontal trim pulling or separating at the seams
- Check your hose bibs for slow-dripping leaks and repair if necessary, and
- BONUS: Buy those insulated hose spigot covers NOW before the first pre-freeze rush.
The idea here is that you are doing all of these things regularly at about the same time of year. If you notice recurring issues with one of these items, make note of it, try to make improvements, and dig deeper to find the source of the problem.
Look for and correct inconsistencies in the moisture levels around your home, the goal is for all sides to be about the same. If one side is extra dry and one side is extra damp and this is ongoing, that inconsistency could be a signal for issues to develop later.
If you notice signs of foundation settlement getting worse year after year and starting to concern you, it could be time to call for a foundation inspection to see if repairs are in order.
Additional Fall Maintenance Tips for Crawl Space Foundations
Crawl space foundation homeowners should do all the things above, but you also have a little extra work to do. For pier and beam and block and base homes, you should also perform these maintenance tasks and checks:
- Check and clear crawl space vent openings of accumulation, leaves, and/or debris
- Inspect for fresh signs of burrowing critters and work to bar their entry to the crawl space
Essentially, you want to keep the good stuff coming in i.e. quality airflow, and keep the bad stuff out like animals that could mess with things under your home.
Keeping your crawl space clean and free from both living and non-living things helps you to more easily spot and correct troubles too. For example, you don’t know if you have an under-home leak if you can’t see through all the debris. Similarly, you won’t know if you have mold, wood rot issues, or termites if you’re unable to inspect the foundation’s crawl space.
The Most Important Thing About Fall Foundation Maintenance
Performing these suggested tasks regularly every fall is great work and checks all the *optimized home* boxes. But do you know what the most important thing is about fall foundation maintenance?
Awareness, plain and simple.
Developing a regular pattern of monitoring is the best way to care for your Brazos Valley foundation. The name of the game is to just observe and be aware of changes and situations happening around your home. That way things don’t fall into that slippery slope of disrepair and neglect for long periods.
The bad stuff sneaks up on you when you have your back turned and yer not lookin’.
Fall is a great time to do these checks and maintenance because you have a window of time when the weather is slightly pleasant. It’s still fairly warm, but we have some decent days with nice breezes and even temperatures in the 70s on occasion. That’s a downright delightful time to be outside!
We are fortunate that we don’t have to do too much to prepare for winter most of the time. It often feels like a stretch to call the two weeks or so of cold a “winter” in some cases. It’s easy to get complacent and not bother preparing. Do your due diligence anyway and it will help you catch little problems before they become big repair issues.
Should You Need Foundation Repairs Instead of Maintenance
Sometimes no matter how good we are at maintenance, checking things over, and handling minor issues, foundation settlement happens anyway. There’s so much you can’t control about our environment and your home may still experience foundation problems.
Homeowners worry when they have foundation problems. You don’t know what to do or who to trust. At Anchor Foundation Repair, we offer fair and impartial assessments, empowering education, and a fully transparent repair process. After 40+ years in business, we want you to know as much about foundations as we do whether it’s about maintenance or repairs.
Should you start to suspect that you have a developing foundation issue, the best things to do are to gauge your feelings and evaluate the functionality of your home. This article will help: When to Get a Foundation Inspection (How to Tell If Your Slab Has Issues)—it mostly applies to crawl space homes as well.
