Tip: Use Soaker Hoses to Save Your Home’s Foundation
By Chuck Cage
Does your sprinkler system normally take care of keeping the dirt around your home’s concrete foundation moist? If so, beware: Cutting back your weekly watering periods as required by the severe water restrictions in many Midwest locales may have more side effects than just leaving your grass brown. It can crack your foundation.
When the ground around the foundation dries up, it begins to “recess,” or pull away from the foundation. With the loss of that support, cracking can occur.
However, most cities offer exceptions for the use of soaker hoses around your foundation, often allowing up to an hour of “soaking” each day. Combine them with a $40 digital timer, and you’re good to go.
If you can’t already tell from our mention of the Gilmour timer, this happened to us. Though you can find soaker hoses at pretty much any home improvement center or garden/hardware store, we picked up ours (linked below) at Lowe’s for about $12.
You’ll need to measure (roughly) around your home to figure out how many you’ll need. (We needed four.) Remember to add a little distance to your measurements to allow for placing the hose about 6″ away from the foundation. Placing it too close will allow the water to just run into any existing gap rather than soaking in and expanding the soil.
Don’t forget to pick up a few end caps (if they’re not already included) and any connectors/splitters/adapters you’ll need to hook ‘em up.
5/8″ x 75′ Soaker Hose [Lowe’s]
September 3rd, 2006 at 1:30 pm
I’ve never heard of of foundations cracking because of too-dry soil pulling away from the /sides/, but there /are/ some ways that too much/too little moiosture can cause problems, especially if there are trees growing beside the foundation and there is a drought. (http://www.greenweb.com.au/archicentre/html/diy_cracking_checklist.html) I you have information to back up what you say, I would appreciate hearing it.
September 3rd, 2006 at 9:32 pm
I had one corner of my foundation drop a couple of inches where the AC condensate dripped and left the ground soggy.
September 6th, 2006 at 9:44 am
[…] This week a number of readers commented to help keep us on the straight and narrow. For example, DeadlyDad questioned our recommendation of using soaker hoses to prevent foundation cracks in dry weather: “I’ve never heard of foundations cracking because of too-dry soil pulling away from the sides, but there are some ways that too much/too little moisture can cause problems, especially if there are trees growing beside the foundation and there is a drought. If you have information to back up what you say, I would appreciate hearing it.” […]