How to Treat Salt in House Foundations

It may come as a surprise to some homeowners, but salt can be a destructive force when it comes into contact with a home's foundation. Homeowners can sometimes make the mistake of building a foundation on saline soils only to be saddled with costly and complex repair work after the salt deteriorates the foundation over time. Luckily, by understanding how salt can damage a foundation, you can exercise preventative steps to spare your foundation this kind of damage.

Instructions

- 1
  Leach the soil beneath your foundation to try and reduce its salt content. In the context of treating saline soils, leaching involves saturating the soil with excessive amounts of water in order to force soluble salts down to a lower soil level where it cannot make direct contact with house foundations. Be sure to measure soil salinity both before and after leaching to make sure that the leaching was effective.
- 2
  Backfill the soil underneath the foundation with non-saline soil\ or gravel. Non-saline soil, either purchased or transplanted from another part of your lawn, or gravel can be used as a sort of buffer zone between saline soils and your home's foundation. Since it is direct physical contact of the soil-borne salt with the foundation that actually causes damage, even a thin separation can go a long way in preventing foundation damage.
- 3
  Slope soil away from the foundation to keep rain and irrigation runoff with high salt content from coming into contact with the foundation. If possible, use construction materials that are designed to resist salt damage such as sulfate-resistant cement and corrosion-resistant metal reinforcement and framing.

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