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Some of you may remember the tv show Green Acres. Essentially a wealthy couple moves out of a big city penthouse filled with every luxury imaginable into a rural farm setting. Well, the US Department of Agriculture wants to get more people to follow suit… putting a new meaning on Green Acres… think cash…

Brian Volz, Vice President of Western Ohio Mortgage Corp, sent me the following link to the US Dept of Agriculture website. Brian’s company is involved in the piloting of a new progam to make mortgage loans more affordable for those willing to move away from “Times Square” to the “fresh air”. Ok, I will stop with the references to the tv show now.

It’s a sad story that we’re seeing more and more here in Cincinnati. A beautiful home in a nice suburb, literally torn apart by crack. Well, ok… not the drugs that you see on tv or hear about on the news. We’re looking at the physical structure that you live in once again. Cracks in the foundation of your home are becoming more common due to the drought that we experienced in southwest Ohio and all across the midwestern US this summer.

I discussed this earlier this summer when the “drought” was actually just a slight shortage of rainfall. My blog entry on July 16th entitled An Urban Legend in Gardening?! discussed what I thought at the time was just an interesting idea without much scientific support. But today I was on the Cincinnati Enquirer website and came across this article:

Drought Cracked Foundations article on Enquirer.com

I have also saved and uploaded this article in Adobe .pdf format, see link below, as I’ve learned that The Enquirer likes to archive its articles rather quickly… therefore making my links in my blog articles useless a few weeks later unless you wanted to pay $$$ to get the article.

Drought Cracked Foundations article in Adobe .pdf format

While the article does not come right out and say “water the ground around your foundation”, it spells it out pretty clearly. The ground we have here in Cincinnati, Ohio (and the same holds true for Ohio and much of the midwest) contains a lot of clay. As clay hardens it is prone to cracks and as the article further notes, it shrinks… hence the ground around your foundation can pull away from the walls of the structure.

This sets up a few problems: 1) the ground can shift causing cracks to form in the foundation, 2) the ground can settle unevenly and your house can settle unevenly and therefore not be level (also causing cracks) and 3) when you do get rain, the ground that has pulled away from your house can act as a funnel sending water against your foundation - compounding the problems in 1 & 2.

While I am not one to water my lawn just for the sake of wanting to mow the grass more frequently, I do see the value in spending $20 to $40 more on my water bill so I’m not spending $1,000… $2,000… $5,000… $10,000 or more repairing my foundation and sealing it from leaks. I don’t have a scientific study to prove that watering around your foundation in a dry time works to keep your foundation in good shape, but I do see the results in this Enquirer article of what happens if you do nothing and the soil shifts, shrinks, or pulls away from your foundation.

As always, I welcome you comments and feedback…