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Drought: The Toll It Can Take On Your Foundation

The Kansas City area is notorious for experiencing its fair share of natural catastrophes, including protracted droughts that are common throughout Kansas. These disasters range from tornadoes, to floods and droughts. The foundation of your home may suffer serious damage from prolonged dryness and drought conditions. Keep in mind that drought causes the soil’s moisture levels to decrease, causing your foundation to contract. Please continue reading to learn how the drought in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas region will impact your foundation.

How Drought Can Affect A Home’s Foundation

Your foundation’s soil contracts as a result of a prolonged water shortage. There are air voids between the foundation of your home and the earth underneath it as a result of soil shrinkage. As the foundation begins to settle against the fresh holes, it begins to crack.

The amount of harm that the drought condition will do to your soil will depend, in part, on the type of soil in your yard. For example, foundations resting on sandy soils are less prone to experience the negative impacts of drought than those resting on clay-heavy soils. Keep in mind that Kansas has significantly more clay than sandy soil. This clarifies why Texas’s foundations are vulnerable to drought degradation.

Indicatives That the Drought Is Impacting Your Foundation

Following are warning signs that the foundation of your home has been harmed by the drought:

  • You have uneven floors.
  • It’s challenging to close and open your windows and doors.
  • Sagging walls.
  • Cracked floors: Wall-to-wall cracks should be an indication that drought has a negative impact on your foundation.
  • Your flooring and walls are no longer attached to your ceilings.
  • Ripped wallpaper.
  • Your porches and chimneys have started to sag toward the house.
  • Fissures running diagonally from the windows to the ceiling.
  • Walls and top moldings have split.