Speaker 1: Host: Kelli Anderson, NDSU Agriculture Communication
Speaker 2: Dr. Ken Helevang, NDSU Extension Agricultural Engineer

This is Sound Ag Advice - a weekly feature presented by NDSU Extension. I'm Kelli Anderson and I'm joined this week by Dr. Ken Hellevang, NDSU Extension Agricultural Engineer.

Kelli: Now this year’s drought could be having an impact on your home, says a recent news release from Dr. Hellevang. This drought is not only affecting crops and plants but is causing problems for homeowners with barns and other structures.

Dr. Hellevang, what are some of the issues that homeowners may be seeing as a result of dry soil occurring during the drought?

Dr. Hellevang: Well,l the first thing that they'll probably see is that, particularly soils like clays, will contract or shrink if the moisture is being removed and then of course if we had water back then they expand. Well, the expansive types of soil becomes an issue around homes or any building that has a basement or a footing because the first thing that they might notice is the soil will pull away from the basement or the foundation. As it pulls away from the basement then air can get down into that space and continue to dry out the soil. The house or many buildings are supported on a footing that sits on the soil. If the drying takes place down to that level of the footing then we start feeling the soil pull away from that footing which typically is concrete and then we will see settling taking place in the structure And that may show up and windows that they don't slide the way they're supposed to it might be doors that don't close. A lot of times they do you know all of a sudden don't latch as you’re closing the door probably that would be some of the first things that you would see in a home our in an ag building whether it's a livestock building or even a pole building you start seeing that settling in and movement within the structure and that can become an issue in a basement it might show up if there is enough of that movement with cracks forming in the basement wall. It might be a crack showing up in the sheetrock or drywall that's in a home or in an ag building it it's typically a movement where you start seeing things moving out of alignment and like I said with doors not closing- and so it's impacting the structure.

Kelli: So if a homeowner begins to notice some of these issues how can they minimize the damage around their home or other building?

Dr. Hellevang: The goal is to try to maintain the soil moisture at a constant level. We don't like it when it's real wet because then we have water coming into basements and affecting us that way. But if we have movement that's taking place ideally we would like to bring some of that moisture level back. We don't do it by putting a garden hose next to the house down into that track because then and we're going to may be causing water intrusion into the building. But we want to be increasing the moisture content of the soil. Maybe using a soaker hose with little holes in it and rather than having it sprinkling up we can even turn it upside down so the holes are gradually adding water to the soil. But again that footing might be 6-7 feet down below the surface so we need to gradually increase the moisture content of the soil. Maybe run the water for an hour today and then get an hour tomorrow so that we gradually give time for that water to work its way back down to the footing level and increase the moisture content. That should cause the soil to expand. Some of the windows we will notice that slide better doors may actually come back so where they're closing and latching. What we don't want to do is like I said, put water right next to the the foundation or footing and we don't want to add soil and fill that crack because as the moisture comes back either through rains or through adding moisture that's going to cause the the expansion to occur and would be a force pushing against that foundation or basement wall. Same thing is going to be true with livestock buildings or with pole barns- gradually adding that water back so that we're creating a nice uniform moisture content and creating that footing level that our buildings need to sit on.

Kelli: Thank you for the information Dr. Hellevang. This has been Sound Ag Advice, a weekly feature presented by NDSU Extension.