Foundation repair & crawl space encapsulation in Brunswick

Local conditions

What we see under Brunswick homes

The city sits low on the mainland between the Brunswick, Turtle and Back rivers, on a mix of sandy fill, marsh clay and old made ground. Elevations across a single block can differ by a couple of feet, and the water table is close enough that a heavy rain or a king tide shows up under the house. Footings from the 1890s through the 1940s were shallow and often unreinforced, so differential settlement is common in Old Town and the neighborhoods around it.

Under the floor, the framing is usually good lumber doing too much work. Interior girders are carried on wood posts set on a single block or straight on the dirt, joist spans run long, and additions get supported by whatever was handy at the time. Add termite pressure and a century of damp and you get the classic Brunswick symptom set: bounce in the middle of the room, doors that stick in August, and a slope you can feel walking from the hall into the kitchen.

Drainage decides the order of operations here. On flat lots served by old ditch systems, water has to be moved out from under the house before anything else is worth doing - then support gets restored with steel jacks and supplemental beams, and only the genuinely settled sections get piered. Sealing a wet Brunswick crawl space before you handle the water just traps the problem.