Stabilize Your Home with Foundation Straps or Foundation Brackets

Foundation Wall Brackets & Straps

The walls of your foundation are under constant pressure from the surrounding soil, which expands and contracts depending on current temperatures and moisture levels. This ever-changing pressure can affect the integrity of your basement walls over time, and you may need a foundation support solution. MidAmerica Basement Systems can provide permanent protection for your foundation walls with our WallDefense brackets.

Many home foundations are made with steel-reinforced poured concrete, thanks to its strength and durability. However, despite the strength of the concrete, these types of basement walls may fail at their weakest points—the connection with the wood framing near the top of the wall. When faced with external pressure from water, soil, or frost, these walls can become disconnected from the framing and start to lean inward.

How can you protect your poured basement walls and prevent this separation from the framing? With WallDefense brackets! These specially designed steel brackets, placed under the floor joists, form a direct link between the basement walls and the house above. When installed correctly, through a qualified Davenport basement contractor, this system can more than quadruple the strength of your home’s structure. WallDefense brackets are simple and easy to install, and offer permanent support for your poured concrete walls. 

While many new homes use poured foundation walls, older homes typically have concrete masonry walls. These blocks can handle a bigger vertical load, but tend to be weaker laterally. So, unlike poured walls, which fail at the top connection, these walls tend to fail in the middle, seen in bowing and cracking. WallDefense straps, made from carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRPs), are the best solution to concrete masonry wall failure. Our team at MidAmerica Basement Systems can install these straps with ease, providing permanent prevention against wall failure.

While most newer homes use poured foundation walls, older homes tend to feature concrete masonry walls. These block walls have the advantage of being able to bear a larger vertical load than poured walls, but because they have multiple joints, they tend to be weaker laterally. So, instead of failing at the top like a poured wall, a block wall tends to fail in the middle, first cracking, then bowing inward as its joints lose connection with each other.

The best way to protect a concrete block wall from failure is to install WallDefense straps. As with the steel brackets, the straps are simple and quick to install. Made from carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRPs) with a tensile strength many times stronger than steel, WallDefense straps hold a block wall together, permanently preventing it from failing.