Gaps between wood floors and walls: An early sign of foundation problems

Great care is taken when building a home to ensure everything—doors, windows, baseboards, moldings—is straight and flush.

So, if you notice a gap forming between your wood floors and the wall, or your baseboards separating from the wall, it might be a sign of serious structural damage.

And, if it is structural damage, sealing the gaps between the floor and wall will only be a cosmetic fix. The underlying structural damage will remain—and likely worsen—in the meantime.

There are several reasons that a gap might be forming. Perhaps the contractors who built your home were inexperienced. Or maybe your floor joists are rotting due to excess moisture, causing your floors to sag.

Baseboards that are separating from walls are also an early sign of foundation settlement. All homes settle to some extent, usually in the first five years. But if you’re starting to notice warning signs piling up — cracked moldings, windows and doors sticking, cracked brick walls, water damage—it’s likely that it’s time for a foundation repair.

It might be time to pick up the phone and call a foundation repair specialist. At Helitech Waterproofing & Foundation Repair, we offer free consultations and free estimates. We’ll quickly evaluate the damage to your foundation or floor joists and give you an estimate for the cost of the necessary work.

You can take our offer or leave it. There’s no obligation. Just an honest and fair quote of what it’ll take to get your home back into shape.

Baseboards separating from walls: Fix the root of the problem

Sometimes, gaps between wood floors and walls can be caused by floor joists that have been affected by dry rot. Cracks in the foundation or improper ventilation systems can cause excess moisture to build up in the crawl space of your home, causing structural beams and floor joists to rot.

Each home and each foundation are different, so it’s difficult to say which repair will work best for your home. There are three primary methods we can use depending on whether the damage is mainly caused by structural shift or water damage.

1. ”Sistering” floor joists
   If the damage isn’t extensive, we can fix this by carving out the affected area of the joist, treating it with a protective solution to prevent future rotting and attaching a new beam to the old one in a process called ”sistering.”
2. Completely replacing floor joists
   When dry rot has reached its final stages, though, it might be necessary to completely replace the joists to restore the structural integrity of your home. We will use floor jacks—adjustable, load-bearing steel beams—to hold up your flooring system during the replacement process.
3. Foundation repair
   Typically, if your foundation problems have reached the point where floors are sagging and baseboards are separating from walls, a simple epoxy patch won’t work.We might have to brace your foundation and lift it back up with helical piles, which will provide long-term support to your foundation system.

Once the structural integrity of your foundation’s system is restored, it’s important to think about how to prevent future water or foundation damage in the future. You might, for instance, want to think about how to control moisture and humidity levels in the crawl space using a vapor barrier, vents and a permanent dehumidifier.

The foundation repair and waterproofing experts at Helitech can guide you through how to best get your home back into shape. Plus, we’ll do it for a fair price and provide transferable warranties on most of our work. So give us a call and schedule a free consultation today.