SHAWNEE

Shawnee has been building continuously since the war, so within a mile you can find a fifties ranch on block, a seventies split level, and a nineties two storey, all on full basements and all on the same clay.

The ground falls away toward the Kansas River, which means a lot of Shawnee lots have real slope on them, and slope decides where water goes.

Where it goes is against somebody’s basement wall, and which decade that wall was poured in decides how well it copes.

More than 50 Shawnee foundation and waterproofing jobs sit in our current records, spread across all three of the soils under the city. Which of them your house is on has changed our recommendation more than once.

What the ground under Shawnee is actually doing

Ladoga covers more of Shawnee than any other soil, with Kennebec along the drainages and Martin on the higher ground. Ladoga and Kennebec are mild — extensibility 3.6 to 4.9 — while Martin is noticeably more active at 6.6 and 38% clay.

So Shawnee is genuinely mixed, and where your house sits within it changes what we expect to find. Kennebec in particular is bottomland soil: the issue there is rarely swelling and often water, because that ground is low for a reason.