What causes cracking?

It’s the ground moving up or down, usually down because of the weight of the house.
The short answer is it’s because of water. Too much or too little or both seasonal movement with doors sticking in summer and free in winter, water will do it.
Too much due to leaking pipes or poor drainage from your house or next door or park. (although not always visible from the surface). Or from trees and bushes too close to the house, taking too much of the moisture out from around your house’s foundations.
The correction is called underpinning, where we would dig down beside your house and lift it back to where it should be or close to it.
But it is important to fix the cause as well, sometime we would just fix the cause and wait till things dry out or where trees are the cause to remove the tree or put a root barrier in to stop the tree roots from reaching and drying out your house foundations. Sometimes the soil will rehydrate and corrected itself but not often due to the  weight of the house. But it is importuned to fix the cause, so things don’t get worst. Some house owners let things go so long that it’s cheaper to pull the house down than to try and fix it.
Another reason why the building would move is that it was never built well and the footings are not deep enough into the ground to avoid the natural seasonal variations in the moisture levels around the foundations of the houses.
A still visit will give us hints as to the cause and what to do. But sometimes it takes further investigations.

For plumbing a camera cheek by John O Plumbing (0422 653 347) we have been using for many years and have found him thorough and reliable picking up mistake others have missed.
A Soil test by a Geotechnical engineer is another way to find out what’s going on below ground and helps with building warranty’s, council permits and engineering design also whether or not you really need underpinning from independent sores. Allen Karlovic we use mostly due to his diligent. (90772 9005 0413 243 654)

Why Shelmar Underpinning

1. A small family-owned business for 35 years
2. Your dealing with the owner and operator
3. Although I’m not digging as much as the guy and girls, I check everything, and I’m usually on
   site.
4. We have never had a callback or complaint that was our fault, never been asked to front the
   building commission.
5. We do not subcontracting out the work. I’m sure there are very good subcontractors out
   there, but we just don’t like the rush and lack of care so many don’t take with their work.
   We have found that many are not insured and don’t pay their taxes. So the decision was
   made not to hire any subcontractors unless they have a Certificate of Currency and any
   workers they have are also fully insured and have work cover insurance.
6. No rubbish left on site any days we are there, no loud music. I like the site as clean as possible as it is a dirty job by nature, so its best things are kept clean as we can. And this may
   sound strange in today’s world but no swearing no site, as sometimes there are children or
   people that take offence at bad language and besides its just shows how dumb you are
7. No one has ever been badly hurt on our job site.
8. Your garden will go back as best we can do given the work that needs to be done.
   What’s against us?
   We are a small company. If I get sick the job slows down. If I die, I have the back up with other companies and family I’ve helped out in the past that can finish the work to my standard.
   Delay in getting to your job, as we only really only do one job at a time. If we have a problem with a job we don’t leave until it is fixed, which can cause a delay, but it could also be a plus.
   We have to compete against businesses that don’t have insurance or are not around in a few years when problem start to appear than the fly-by-nighters
   Competing with short term fixes by other and cheaper methods many times they don’t bother to fix
   the cause and therefore we have to start all over again