Foundation Repair in Fort Valley, Arizona

Foundation repair in Fort Valley is a snowmelt problem more often than anything else. The Fort Valley area runs northwest from Flagstaff along US Route 180 — Fort Valley Road — climbing toward the San Francisco Peaks and the Snowbowl. It is a census-designated place in Coconino County, and it takes more snow than the city does because of elevation and its position on the flank of the Peaks.

Why this area gets so much water

Fort Valley is a valley, which is not a trivial observation. It is a broad meadow with the Peaks rising to the east and forested ridges around it, and everything that falls on those slopes comes down through here. Snowpack at higher elevations releases into this drainage through the spring, so the melt event in Fort Valley is both larger and longer than in town.

The area has a long history of being studied for exactly these reasons. The Fort Valley Experimental Forest, established in 1908, is the oldest forest experiment station in the country, and it sits here because this ground represents the ponderosa pine ecosystem and its hydrology. There has been over a century of documented attention to how water moves through this valley.

For a homeowner, all of that translates to one thing: your foundation is going to spend several weeks a year in saturated ground, and where that water goes is the difference between a dry crawlspace and a rotting one.

Meadow soils versus cinder

Much of the ground east of Flagstaff is free-draining volcanic cinder. Valley bottoms and meadows are different: they accumulate finer material washed down from surrounding slopes over thousands of years, so soils tend to be siltier and to hold moisture rather than shedding it. Fine-grained, moisture-holding soil is what frost heaves. Coconino County's 30-inch frost depth requirement is a floor, not a comfortable margin, on ground like this.

A footing in silty meadow soil above the frost line will heave every winter. A footing in free-draining cinder in the same conditions often will not, because there is less held water to freeze. This is why two houses fifteen miles apart at similar elevation can behave completely differently.

The building stock

Fort Valley and the adjacent Baderville area contain a real mix: original cabins and seasonal structures from earlier eras, a scattering of ranch properties, mid-century homes, and a good number of newer custom homes built to take advantage of the Peaks views. The older cabins are the ones we most often get called about, and for a predictable reason. They were built as summer structures, on shallow foundations, sometimes on piers set on grade, by people who never intended them to be occupied through a winter. Then somebody insulated them, added heat, and moved in year-round.

A structure heated through the winter interacts with frozen ground differently than an unheated one. Heat loss through the floor thaws soil under the middle of the building while the perimeter stays frozen, which is a recipe for differential movement. Converting a seasonal cabin to a full-time residence without addressing the foundation is one of the more common ways people inherit a foundation problem out here.

What we look at in Fort Valley

• Where meltwater arrives on the property and where it exits.
• Whether the structure was originally seasonal and has been converted.
• Footing depth and type, especially on anything built before permits were common out here.
• Crawlspace moisture and framing condition, which is the number one finding in this area.
• Roof snow shed patterns — where a metal roof dumps its load determines where the ground stays wettest.
• Drainage discharge that has to survive freezing.

Roof snow is a foundation issue here

This deserves its own note because Fort Valley gets enough snow that it matters. A steep metal roof sheds its load in the same place every time, all winter. That produces a linear pile of dense snow along a drip line, which melts into the same strip of soil for weeks. We have traced more than one settlement problem in this area directly to a roof shed line. The fix is often as simple as snow guards or a gutter and extension, and it is dramatically cheaper than the alternative.

Permits

Fort Valley is unincorporated Coconino County, and the county maintains a Fort Valley area plan. Structural repairs generally require a permit. Contractor licenses in Arizona can be verified free at roc.az.gov.

Nearby work

• Bellemont
• Doney Park
• Williams
• Pier and beam repair
• Waterproofing
• All service areas