High Jacking

There's just no disobeying the law of gravity. As we get a little older, every time we look in a mirror we can't help but notice gravity's effects in various places. As the years go by, things just start to settle a bit.

The same, of course, is true for houses. And whether you are human or habitat, there is only so much that can be done with plaster, paint, and patching. Sometimes it becomes necessary to do something more fundamental to shore up the foundations.

I mean the house's foundations, of course. It has been settling over the 30-something years since it was moved here, sliding ever so slowly, millimeter by millimeter, downhill toward the septic tank. It has made some progress over the years, as evidenced by the cracked drywall in the basement stairway, the gap between the kitchen counter and the wall, a couple of noticeable cracks in the concrete in front of the garage door, and a definite tilt in the sidewalk behind the house.

This must be a bit embarrassing for a geologist, who presumably would like to think his house had been built on a foundation of solid rock. Of course, it would take a hundred years or so before anything drastic happened, but in geological time that is the merest blink of an eyelash.

All this is by way of explaining why the mudjacking guys were at our house this week, jackhammering, caulking, and doing whatever mudjacking is, exactly. They drilled several holes in the concrete, including one inside the garage that was uncomfortably close to the water line that comes in from the well. As the crew leader admitted after they were done, "Yeah, I was a little nervous about that."

But they missed the water line, so we were spared the excitement and drama of our very own flood. They pumped goop into a hole under the sidewalk where water from the eaves had washed out a bunch of dirt, they filled in the cracks in the concrete, and they leveled things out as much as possible. Then they tidied up after themselves and headed off to the next project.

The garage is safe from gravity for a few more years. Right now we're all square with the world, at least that one particular corner of it. It feels so—uplifting.