What It Does:
Street creep is a problem that is caused by thermal expansion and contraction of exterior concrete pavement that surrounds a home.
As this concrete expands against a driveway with inadequate expansion joints, the driveway is pushed against the garage slab, which in turn pushes against the foundation, causing damage.
While this is a slow process and can take many years to develop, the damage can be very serious when it manifests on your foundation walls.
The Street Creep Repair System will prevent future damage with new expansion joints in your concrete driveway as well as a steel wall anchor system that reinforces and straightens your foundation walls. This provides a permanent, reliable solution.
Technical Features
- Year-Round Installation
- One-Day Installation For Most Jobs
- Potential To Straighten Bowed Walls
- 25-Year Manufacturer’s Warranty
What Causes Street Creep Damage?
Street creep is a common foundation problem that’s caused by the thermal expansion and contraction of concrete streets and pavement surrounding a home. Like many materials, concrete expands when it’s hot and contracts when it’s cold. Contractors place expansion joints in sidewalks, driveways and other exterior slabs so that temperature-induced expansion and contraction won’t cause a slab to crack.
Here are some of the key factors in street creep damage:
- Expansion joints: Expansion joints divide a large expanse of concrete into individual slabs that can expand and contract independently. Temperature fluctuations throughout the seasons will cause these joints to widen in the colder months and narrow during hot weather.
- Cold weather: Problems with street creep begin to arise during the cold winter months, when the widened joints become filled with materials like sand or gravel.
- Warm weather: As temperatures rise again during warmer weather, the concrete expands. But if joints have filled with sand and gravel, they can no longer absorb this movement. Instead, one slab will push against another.
- Debris: Once they’re filled with debris, expansion joints can no longer do their job. The entire expanse of concrete expands as a single unit, causing the street to “creep.” Street creep exerts tremendous pressure at the edge of the concrete, where a driveway meets a garage slab or a house foundation wall.
Damage from street creep is a slow process – the elongation of a typical block-length concrete street is generally only a fraction of an inch each year. However, over time, the movement will add up to several inches, which will mean potentially serious damage to your foundation.
Street Creep Repair In Two Steps
At Ohio Basement Authority, we address street creep repairs with the Street Creep System. This innovative foundation repair product solves the problem in two ways:
Step 1: Creating New Driveway Expansion Joints
There’s no way to stop the normal expansion and contraction of concrete slabs that occur with temperature changes. But it is possible to eliminate the damage caused by this movement.
The foundation repair contractor will install one or more new expansion joints in your driveway to allow individual slabs to move without pushing against the garage slab and your foundation wall.
Each joint is filled with a resilient backer rod and a durable, flexible polyurethane sealant.
Step 2: Installing Foundation Wall Anchors
Once the expansion joints have been created, we install the Wall Anchor System. These wall anchors will stabilize foundation walls that have been pushed in, cracked or otherwise damaged by street creep.
Thanks to the wall anchor’s adjustable capability, it may be possible to go beyond wall stabilization and even use the system to restore wall straightness.
During installation, holes are cut through the garage slab floor, and soil is augured out to allow for earth anchor placement.
Next, holes are drilled through the foundation wall so that a long threaded steel rod can connect each earth anchor to a steel plate that applies clamping pressure against the wall.
Once the earth anchors, rods and steel plates are in place, nuts are tightened on the rods to stabilize the wall and (if possible) pull the wall back towards its original position. The holes in your garage slab are carefully patched and your worries about street creep damage are over.
Installing new expansion joints, combined with the Wall Anchor System is exactly what you need to stabilize foundations that have been damaged by Street Creep!
Our Foundation Repair Experts can help you
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