preview

Frost Heve Research Paper

Decent Essays

Most people only worry about the snow and ice melting and causing water damage in the spring, but what is it doing to your home during winter? The fact of the matter is that the cold temperatures cause the groundwater to freeze, which can be damaging to your home’s foundation. There are a couple of different factors that could harm the walls of the foundation.
Frost Heave: To understand frost heaves, you first need to understand ice lenses. An ice lens forms when the groundwater is continually supplied to the upper layer of soil that is at freezing temperature. As water continues to flow to the ice lens, the lens grows upward toward the surface and lifts the soil, foundation, or pavement with it: a frost heave. This displacement of the surface above the lens can distort the ground and is a major cause for pothole creation during the winter. Frost heaves generally affect sidewalks or roads, but they can affect homes …show more content…

As you may recall from any chemistry class you have ever taken, the freezing of water in the soil simply causes the ground to expand in all directions due to the expansion of a water molecule when it freezes. The expansion causes excess pressure to be applied to your home’s foundation. The pressure can cause your foundation to crack and will make it more susceptible to leak during the spring when the snow melts. In the next few months, the temperature will vary from slightly above freezing to well below freezing. As the temperature rises and the snow melts, the water will begin to enter the cracks already formed in your foundation. When the temperature, then, drops below freezing again, the water in the cracks will refreeze, expand, and create larger fractures in the foundation’s walls. This process can continue throughout the next few months, but you may not notice it until a leak begins when the snow is

Get Access