🐊Steel Beams for Foundation Repair: What are I Beams? | 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!

Today we're going to talk about foundation cracks and the use of steel i beams to repair them. Steel i beams are a rigid structure shaped like an uppercase I used in construction of skyscrapers and other steel buildings and sometimes used for fixing a crack in your foundation to stop inward movement. A steel i beam is not necessarily designed to be used in a basement. It is a product that has become used over time because it's what was available. We don't recommend it in a basement because of its rigidity. It can maybe not stop inward movement and it can break and bend because it's not designed to move with a basement wall that is in a constant flux of movement. We use a product called the PowerBrace. So the PowerBrace is also an i-beam but it is engineered to flex and move with the wall of your basement.