Basement Waterproofing - 🐊Steel Beam Alternative: PowerBraces | Foundation Repair

A mini-series on steel beams (also known as i beams) for foundation repair in your basement. Are they a good idea? Are there any alternatives? What are the pros and cons? New videos every Sunday!

So the PowerBraces are a zinc-plated i beam. The i beam is engineered to have some flex to it so it's not 100% rigid. What that allows us to do is not only stop inward movement but it allows us to fix the wall over time. Again it is zinc coated so will not rust. A lot of basements are moist and humid so you run the risk of those regular steel i beams rusting over time and failing. The PowerBrace, because of the zinc coating, will never rust and will never fail. It is engineered to be mounted to the floor joist and the floor with special brackets that allows us to hold up your wall and a tightening system is put at the top so over time that crack, that bow, can actually be straightened out in seasons of dry climate. So the installation steps- we of course will measure your basement, look at the deflection of the crack that you have, take measurements, use a load calculator- there is a degree of engineering that's involved with this. We make sure that we have the right count of PowerBraces and the right location of where they're going to be and we'll make sure that there are no obstructions in the way so they can be mounted directly to the wall and we will use a tightening bracket up at the top. Depending on which way your floor joists run we will determine which tightening bracket you need and that allows us to a fix it to your wall. One of the things that we will take a look at when we're inspecting for installing PowerBraces is the strength of your floor because the PowerBraces mounted to the floor joist is using that for structural integrity if there are problems or we need to reinforce your floor joists we will certainly do that before we install the PowerBraces.