Solid Foundation Work for Linden Heights, Des Moines

What Foundation and Waterproofing Challenges Affect Linden Heights?

Linden Heights is an exclusive pocket of early-20th-century estates, the kind of substantial masonry homes whose value is bound up in their original architecture. That's exactly what makes their most common foundation problem so delicate to fix.

These large, heavy structures concentrate enormous load on their foundations, and the clay-rich Des Moines Lobe till beneath them rarely bears that load evenly. As the soil swells and shrinks through the seasons, different parts of the foundation settle at different rates — differential settlement that opens cracks through masonry and threatens the integrity of a historic wall. The challenge is arresting it without disturbing the very facade that gives the home its worth.

JLB specializes in exactly that kind of careful stabilization. We underpin settling sections with piers driven from targeted, low-impact access points to bring the foundation back to a common bearing, and we stabilize and repoint historic masonry using methods that preserve its original appearance. The structure is corrected; the architecture is left intact.

In Linden Heights the repair has to be as respectful as it is structural. We stabilize differential settlement beneath these estates without altering their historic faces — protecting both the foundation and the architecture that makes them valuable.

In Linden Heights the repair has to be as careful as it is structural — underpinning a historic estate without disturbing the facade that gives it its worth. We work from targeted, low-impact access points for that reason, correcting the settlement beneath the home while leaving the architecture above it untouched.