What Are the Signs of Water Damage to the Foundation of a Home?

Concrete is a pretty durable material, so you might not worry much about the possibility of water creating lasting damage after a floor or major leak. This is not the attitude you want to have.

Since concrete is porous, after a significant water event, the excess water can fill into every concrete pore. The water makes its way to the foundation of your home, degrading the quality of the concrete as it does.

The damage might not happen overnight, but what damage occurs can crack your home’s foundation and make it a dangerous place to live.

That’s why you must pay attention if you notice any of the following signs of foundational damage from water. Some of these symptoms might seem small and inconsequential enough, but each is an indicator that your home’s foundation is falling apart as you speak. 

Before you go into your home to look for signs of severe water damage, start outdoors first. How is the soil at the base of your house? Is it level and even with the rest of the ground or has it begun to sink?

If the soil is sloping downward or has severely sunken in, that’s a pretty obvious giveaway that your home has incurred water damage.

A little bit of settling is normal for most homes, especially if yours was built 50 to 100 years ago. What’s not normal is sudden home shifting, and that’s doubly true if your home shifts right after a leak or flood.

What’s happening here is that the foundational damage has caused the slabs of your home’s foundation to move up. In other situations, the soil fills with water and expands, then becomes smaller through water absorption, causing the home’s foundation to move. Either way, it’s not a good sign.

If your home has a few cracks on the exterior here and there, that could just be from wear and tear over the decades. That said, new, egregious cracks after a water leakage or flood are your house’s way of telling you that something more serious is going on.

Perhaps everything looks okay outside, at least for the most part. If so, then it’s time to look inside your home, where the signs of foundational damage from water are typically more overt. For instance, is it just you or are your floors uneven?

Home settling can cause uneven floors to a degree, but if it seems like the issue arose overnight, then you probably have water damage to blame. If you’re not quite sure if the floor is uneven, try grabbing a marble and rolling it down the corner of the floor. On an even floor, the marble shouldn’t go far, but if the floor is uneven, it will travel from one corner to another as it rides down the subtle slope.

Besides uneven floors, you might notice that your windows and doors are all out of whack. The window frames now have gaps that let in cold or hot air when these gaps didn’t exist before. Also, your doors have gaps too, so you’re having a hard time closing the door all the way. It’s like it doesn’t want to fit in the doorframe.

These wooden frames likely became warped during the flood or leak, or shifting has caused the interior of your home to settle unevenly. These issues can worsen as the foundational damage continues.

Lingering humidity in your home from excess water can absolutely cause the development of mold and/or mildew. You may notice the fungi in parts of your home where it never was before, such as the sitting room or the bedroom. The mold may also grow rampant in already-humid areas of the house such as the bathroom, kitchen, or even the basement.

Accompanying the mold and mildew is a musty odor that seems to follow you from room to room. You’ve tried lighting candles, using an oscillating fan to blow the air around, spraying an air freshener, and yet the mustiness persists. This indicates that water is still lingering in your home’s foundation.

If the rest of your home’s interior seems alright so far, make sure that you check the basement. Here, all sorts of prevalent symptoms will tell you something has gone very, very wrong. As said, you may see more mold and mildew. The musty odor may intensify here, and both the floors and walls can be cracked from foundational water damage.

This is more common in your basement, but other painted rooms that incurred water damage may also experience this symptom as well. That is, the paint that you worked so hard to add to your walls now peels right off like you were unpeeling a banana. The water behind the walls likely pushed the paint off like this, but it’s a distressing sign nonetheless.

If you’ve noticed foundational damage to your home after a flood or leak, don’t expect that things will get better on their own. Your home will continue to degrade from the inside out as water passes through the foundation and breaks it down more and more. Eventually, your home won’t be safe to live in anymore. This is why it is imperative that you resolve these problems asap!

It is absolutely possible for water damage to impact the foundation of a home. From peeling paint to uneven floors to sinking soil, the signs can be both obvious and hidden. After reading this article, you are hopefully now more confident in understanding the signs of potential water damage to the foundation of a home.