Sagging Floors - What to Look For and Why it Happens.

Have you noticed your floors feeling soft or bouncy? Do you ever worry about how much longer your floors will be able to support the weight of your home on top of them? These are serious concerns that no homeowner wants to deal with, but they are important to handle when the signs appear. Sagging floors are a sign of foundational damage or failure and can effect a home's safety, appearance, and value if not handled in a timely manner. 

Here's what to look for:

• sagging / sloping in the floors
• gaps in between floors and interior walls
• gaps around door frames
• gaps in existing support columns 
• interior walls sinking downward 
• interior walls bowing inward
• cracks on interior walls
• doors sticking closed
• high moisture / humidity 
• wood rot
• floor joist deterioration

Why does this happen?

There could be many reasons that you might be experiencing sagging floors in your home...

When being built, the columns located throughout your crawl space could have been placed too far apart to be able to sustainably support the weight of your home above. When a beam is overloaded, it will cause a sagging in-between the columns. 

Since crawl spaces are typically exposed to the earth, high humidity and excessive moisture are a frequent problem. When wood is exposed to theses types of conditions overtime, it begins to rot, mold, and inevitably weaken, So, your floors joists and girders could have become too weak overtime to support the floors above. 

Even the simple presence of weak soils beneath your home could be the saggy-floor-culprit. Weak soils allow the existing supports in your crawl space to shift and settle overtime, causing a chain reaction of columns settling, girders settling, and floors sagging. 

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Whatever the reason may be, bouncing and sagging floors are a serous issue that should be addressed as quickly as possible. They are a clear sign of serious damage to a home's structure. If left untreated for long enough, it can lead to injury, property loss, and disaster.

If you think you are experiencing sagging floors in your home, give us a call and ask about our SmartJack Crawl Space Stabilizer System.