This summer’s drought conditions are not only heating up temperatures.

The dry weather is also heating up business for local foundation repair contractors.

Justin Boska has lived in his Columbia home for more 11 years and has never seen a foundation problem like this one.  His doors are sticking.  His walls and windows are cracking.  His foundation is slipping because the ground supporting his house is drying up.

Boska said, “The problem has been around for a good amount of time.  The cracks that I’ve been noticing now, and the sticking, have been happening during the last 2 months.”

Home foundations can shift more than an inch in less than a week during these extreme dry conditions.  A crack like this in your home not only affects your foundation, it also affects one of the biggest investments in your life.  If you don’t fix something like this right away, it could drop the value of your home dramatically.

Jeff Martin and his wife Kim own and operate Foundation Recovery Systems.  Their business has nearly doubled within the past month.

Jeff Martin said, “It doesn’t really matter about the age of the home itself.  It can be a brand new house or it could be a 50 or 60 year old home.  Mother Nature has actually taken the water away from the clay soil itself.  That, of course, is causing the homes to have a foundation problem.”

Most insurance agents don’t cover the cost of foundation repair because they consider the damage “An Act of God”.  Repairs could cost up to $10,000 in extreme cases.

Spraying the entire outside base of your home with a water hose on a regular basis is one way to help prevent foundation problems.