Under the house
Sand pumping
Sand pumped under the house fills the voids that make floors feel soft and settle. It keeps water from sitting under the home, protects the pilings and supports the foundation and the plumbing.
Soft floors and the empty space beneath them
Do you have voids in your flooring? Maybe a stretch of floor gives a little underfoot, or a room has slowly drifted out of level. Under a house, the ground can settle and wash away from the underside of the floor, leaving a gap between the soil and the structure above it. Homes around Kenner, Metairie and New Orleans sit on soft Louisiana ground, so settling is a fact of life, not a freak event.
That gap is not harmless. Water collects in low spots under the home and sits there, which invites wood rot in the framing above it. A void also leaves the floor and the plumbing hanging without the support they were built to have. The house does not drop overnight, but the problem under it keeps growing while you cannot see it, and the first sign is usually a floor that feels wrong.
Sand pouring from the conveyor of a Peterson sand truck on a job
How sand gets under the house
Sand pumping is half of our name for a reason. We pump sand from under the home to fill the voids beneath the floor, using our sand pumping trucks and conveyor, and the crew runs the job from our yard in Kenner out to your address. Owner Mark Peterson is on every job, so the person who judges how much void there is also watches the sand go in.
Because we are plumbers as well, we look at what the voids are doing to the lines. Plumbing hung over an empty space has nothing under it, and a sagging drain can crack or back up. We can tell a floor that needs sand from a floor that has a leak washing the sand away, and when it is the second, our underslab crews find and repair the leak before more sand goes in. Louisiana Master Plumber #1416 covers both sides of the work.
What fill does for the foundation and the pilings
Sand packed into the voids protects the pilings you may have under your home, protects and supports your foundation, supports the plumbing, and eliminates places for water to gather. That is four jobs from one fix, and they are the reason a soft floor is worth dealing with sooner instead of later, before settling puts a crack in something more expensive to repair.
Skip it and the voids stay, the water keeps sitting, and the next stop is rotted framing or lines that have lost their support. We work in New Orleans, Metairie, Kenner, Houma and Thibodaux, and we have been doing it since 1979. Estimates are free and same-day, and emergency service runs 24/7 if something under the house has already gone wrong and cannot wait for the morning.
Sand pumping from Peterson Plumbing & Sand Pumping, Kenner since 1979. Louisiana Master Plumber #1416, owner on every job, free same-day estimates.