Building foundations suffering more damage due to climate change

After another hot summer this year, reports of foundation damage to houses in the Netherlands are rising again, according to figures from the Knowledge Center for Foundation Problems (KCAF). Alarmed soil experts, housing associations, and homeowners asked Minister Hugo de Jonge of Housing to pay attention to the problem, EenVandaag reports.

This year, KCAF already registered nearly 2,000 reports of houses with foundation damage and sinking homes. That is 70 more than in 2018. The reports are not only coming from the swampy west of the country but also from regions where such problems are far from ordinary.

According to KCAF director Dick de Jong, the hot summers of 2018, 2020, and 2022 exacerbated these issues. “The drought is causing a low water level, which means that soil next to rivers is now also settling,” he said to the program. “Previously, reports of damage usually came from houses built on piles, often in the west of the Netherlands. After such a hot summer, we see the number of reports increasing from other parts of the country.”

Just over half of this year’s reports involved houses without foundation piles, he said. “Think of houses on sandy and clay soils in Gelderland, Overijssel, and Noord-Brabant.”

The homeowners association VEH, the Dutch Banking Association, the Dutch Association of Insurers, the housing associations’ umbrella Aedes, and KCAF sent a letter to Minister De Jonge of Housing, alerting him to the issue. Parliament will discuss it next week.