Hydrostatic pressure after heavy rain
Saturated clay backfill presses inward on walls and pushes water through cove joints and cracks.
Wet basements, cracked and bowing walls, damp crawl spaces and settling foundations — repaired by our own crews, out of our own shop on West 16th Street in Indianapolis. We have been coming out to Montgomery County homes for four decades. Here that covers ZIP code 47989, on the flat clay ground of the Tipton Till Plain.
Glacial till & heavy clay
Waveland, in Montgomery County, sits on the Tipton Till Plain — flat ground over dense, clay-rich glacial till left behind by the last ice age.
Clay holds water and swells when it is wet, then shrinks back as it dries. That seasonal push and pull against foundation walls is the single most common reason we get called out here. Because the ground is flat, water also has nowhere obvious to go: it soaks into the backfill beside your foundation and stays there, building pressure against block and poured walls alike.
It also means the repair has to do two jobs at once: relieve the water pressure and hold the wall where it belongs. Doing only one of them is why so many homeowners are on their second contractor.
Saturated clay backfill presses inward on walls and pushes water through cove joints and cracks.
Wet-dry cycles expand and contract the clay against footings, opening stair-step and horizontal cracks.
Flat grade and tight soil keep surface water sitting against the house instead of moving away from it.
One company for the whole job. We diagnose it, price it, do the work with our own crews and stand behind it afterwards.
Stop water getting in, and move the water that is already there back out.
Dry it out, seal it up, and fix the framing the damp has already cost you.
Stabilize what has moved, then correct the conditions that moved it.
Any one of these is worth a free inspection. Two or more usually means the cause is structural rather than cosmetic, and waiting makes the repair bigger.
A real person in Indianapolis answers — not a national call center. We book your free inspection while you are on the phone.
An inspector walks the Waveland property, inside and out — basement or crawl space, grading, gutters, the lot itself. Expect an hour, and expect to be shown what he is looking at.
Scope, method and cost in writing, with financing options. No pressure to sign on the spot.
Michaelis employees, not subcontractors. We clean up behind us and we are still here if you need us in ten years.
Waveland is inside our service area and always has been. We cover ZIP code 47989, and there is no travel charge for coming out to you — the inspection is free whether you are ten minutes from our shop or an hour. Waveland is one of 6 Montgomery County towns on our list — Crawfordsville, Ladoga and Linden among them — and all of them sit on the same ground: glacial till and heavy clay.
Free inspections are usually scheduled within a few days, and we give you a time window rather than an all-day wait. If a wall has moved suddenly or water is actively coming in, say so when you call and we will get you in sooner.
It depends on the cause and the size of the area, which is exactly what the free inspection is for. Our published ranges run from a few hundred dollars for a single crack repair to the mid five figures for full structural work — see the cost table on our FAQ page for service-by-service ranges. Financing is available.
Ask your neighbors. Our trucks are in Montgomery County and the counties bordering it most weeks, so these towns are already on the route.
Full service area directoryA crack you can fit a coin in today is a wall replacement in five years. The inspection in Waveland costs nothing and takes about an hour.