What are Subsidence Foam Injections?
Imagine you have a wobbly table because one of its legs is shorter than the others. To fix it, you might slide a wedge or shim under the shorter leg to make the table level again. Foam resin injections work in a similar way, but for your house.
If you’d like to learn how quickly foam resin injections fix your home foundations and why you should choose Subsidence Ltd to rectify your cracked walls, speak to us between 8am and 8pm at night at 0333 1300592. You can also get a cost estimate with our resin injections cost calculator.
Foundation Stabilisation with Resin Injections The Easy Way in One day
Your house sits on the ground, and sometimes the ground underneath can move or sink, making your house uneven, just like the wobbly table. This can cause cracks in walls or make floors slope. To fix this, we use foam resin injections, which is a bit like a magic expanding foam.
The process is very controlled. The professionals doing the work monitor the foam’s expansion and the house’s response. It’s a bit like filling a balloon with just the right amount of air to make it float without popping.
The foam is a 2-part resin, when the two active ingredients are mixed, the resin bubbles up to fill all voids with a rapid hardening chemical reaction. The resin foam we use has been specifically manufactured to adapt to different soil types around England, like London Clay or different rock strata in South Wales.
Chemical Reaction Process – From a liquid resin mixture to expanding foam, setting like concrete
Why Foam? The reason we use this special foam is that it has some unique properties. Once it starts to interact with the air and the soil underground, it begins to expand and solidify. This expansion is controlled and precise, allowing us to lift the house gently and accurately.
Let’s begin by fact-finding. We need to figure out where your house is sinking or settling. This is like finding the short leg of a wobbly table. Engineering professionals will look at the cracks and the way your house is leaning to decide the best spots to work on.
Once we know where the problem is, we drill small holes in the ground around that area. These holes are usually not very big – just large enough for the equipment to fit. Think of it like putting a straw into a drink; the straw is small, but it’s the perfect size to get the liquid out. Through these holes, we inject a special kind of foam. This isn’t like the foam you see in cushions or mattresses. When it’s first injected, it’s more like a liquid. This allows it to flow into the spaces and gaps underground where it’s needed.
Due to the minimal disruption and quick completion time, in most cases, residents do not need to vacate their property during the resin injection process, unlike some traditional underpinning methods.
Structural Underpinning – Without the mechanical lifting process, quicker and cheaper
Resin injection leaves little to no visible sign on the property once completed, preserving its aesthetic appeal, which can be particularly important for historic buildings or in conservation areas. Foam resin is typically less invasive to the surrounding environment compared to the extensive digging and construction work involved in traditional underpinning. This can be a significant advantage in sensitive areas or where there are concerns about the ecological impact of construction work.
Traditional underpinning is a method used to fix buildings that are sinking or have foundations that are no longer stable.
Structural engineers used to dig underneath your home foundations, physically breaking into the very foundations of a property to insert metal supports which apply upward pressure over time. This traditional way of resolving slipped foundations and soil movement over time takes even more time to have a positive effect. This engineering solution is nowadays only used for extremely dangerous cases of property neglect and is usually seen in centrury homes, abandoned buildings and properties which have been left untouched over multiple decades.
Digging Deep Holes or Trenches: Imagine you have a toy house that’s starting to lean because the base isn’t strong enough. To fix it, you’d need to support the base. In traditional underpinning, we do something similar by digging deep holes or trenches under the house. This is like creating a new, deeper layer of ground to support the house.
Building Strong Supports: In these holes or trenches, we build strong supports, often using concrete. It’s like putting a stack of strong blocks under the toy house to make sure it doesn’t lean or sink anymore. These supports go deep into the ground to reach stable soil or rock that can hold up the weight of the house.
Transferring the Load: The weight of the house, which was originally resting on the weaker soil, is gradually transferred to these new supports. This is a careful process, almost like sliding a new foundation under the house while it’s still standing. It’s done slowly to make sure the house stays safe and doesn’t get damaged.
Filling the Gaps: Once the new supports are in place and the house is resting on them, the gaps between the new supports and the old foundation are filled, often with concrete. This is like filling any gaps under the toy house to make sure it’s completely stable and won’t move.
After all this is done, the house should be stable and no longer sinking. The ground around the new supports is filled back in, and the area is tidied up.
CEO of Subsidence Ltd