Foundation Repair in Munds Park, Arizona

Foundation repair in Munds Park has a specific character, and it comes from the fact that a large share of the housing here is not occupied year-round. Munds Park is an unincorporated community in Coconino County at about 6,900 feet, roughly seventeen miles south of Flagstaff at Interstate 17 exit 322, built largely around the Pinewood Country Club development.

It is a second-home and cabin community. The population in July looks nothing like the population in February. And that gap is where foundation problems grow.

The empty house problem

Every foundation issue we deal with in the high country gets worse when nobody is watching, but Munds Park is the clearest case.

The damaging season here is roughly March through May: months of accumulated snow releasing into ground that is still partly frozen, running through and around foundations for weeks. That is precisely the season when most Munds Park owners are somewhere else. A crawlspace can take standing water every spring for five or six years running before anybody opens the access hatch and looks.

By the time it is found, the damage is not a wet crawlspace. It is decayed sill plates and joist ends, which is a structural repair. Wood at sustained high moisture content grows decay fungi, and decayed wood loses strength well before it looks obviously bad.

The fix for this is embarrassingly simple: somebody looks at the crawlspace in April. Not August, when everything has dried out and looks fine. April, while the evidence is still there.

Reduced heating, and what it does

Second homes get left at low heat or no heat through the winter. That changes how the ground under and around the structure behaves.

An occupied, heated house loses some heat through its floor, which keeps soil under the middle of the building from freezing as deeply. An unheated house does not, so frost penetrates more uniformly and more deeply under the entire footprint. Then when the owner arrives for a weekend in February and turns the heat on, the thermal picture changes again.

Alternating between heated and unheated through a winter with a hundred-plus freeze-thaw cycles is harder on a foundation than either state consistently. Coconino County's 30-inch frost depth requirement assumes the footing is below the freeze, and where an older Munds Park cabin has footings shallower than that, an unheated winter will find them.

The other risk is plumbing. A supply line that freezes and splits in an empty house can run for a very long time before anybody notices, and that water goes into the soil under the foundation. We have been called out for "settlement" that turned out to be a burst line that had been feeding the ground for weeks.

Forested lots and snow load

Munds Park sits in ponderosa forest at almost 6,900 feet and takes serious snow. Steep roofs shed their load in the same place all winter, building dense linear snow piles along drip lines that then melt into a narrow strip of soil for weeks. Tree canopy shades snow so it lingers, which prolongs the melt and makes it uneven around a single structure.

Where a cabin has no gutters — common here, because gutters and heavy snow are a difficult combination — every roof plane is delivering its entire seasonal precipitation into a strip of ground a few feet from the foundation.

Mixed construction eras

Munds Park has original cabins, homes from the Pinewood development era, and newer custom construction. Newer homes built to current code generally do fine. Older cabins, especially anything built before permitting was consistently enforced out here, are where we find shallow footings, piers on grade, and wood in ground contact.

What we check in Munds Park

• Crawlspace water lines and staining that indicate seasonal flooding.
• Framing moisture and decay, probed at sill plates and joist ends.
• Footing depth, exposed and measured.
• Whether the structure is heated through the winter and at what level.
• Roof shed patterns and gutter condition.
• Plumbing for evidence of past freeze damage.

A note for owners who are not local

If you own a Munds Park property and live elsewhere, the most valuable thing you can arrange is a set of eyes on the crawlspace at the end of the melt. It takes twenty minutes and it catches the problem while it is still a drainage fix rather than a framing replacement. We are glad to do it, and looking costs nothing.

Permits

Munds Park is unincorporated Coconino County, so the county handles permitting. Structural work generally requires a permit. Any Arizona contractor license can be verified free at roc.az.gov.

Nearby work

• Kachina Village
• Mountainaire
• Mormon Lake
• Sedona
• Pier and beam repair
• All service areas