Damage to Foundation walls, clay soil, underground tree roots, droughts

Pages 6, 7 Damage to Foundation Walls
…when clays are placed in backfill against basement foundation walls… this practice may still occur where the builder is uninformed or careless… (be real, doesn’t give a shtt)

failing walls can exert damaging forces on nearby sewer, water and gas pipes. (yeah those things that some HI’s may not see in some basements that are finished)

…marine clay should never be placed in backfill behind foundation wall…
based on application submissions and project reviews, the most successful repair method…is to REMOVE and replace the clay soil with sand or gravel… and waterproof the exterior of foundation wall.

Hellllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

what i still see occurring is most builders continue to backfill with most of the same excavated soil and many only damproof the Ext walls, some now plop/attach a dimpled black membrane along ext-wall, well, the dimp-membrane needs to adhere to the stupid wall to be a true waterproofing membrane, another problem.

Dry Soil May Cause Building Foundation Problems
https://droughtresources.unl.edu/dry-soil-may-cause-building-foundation-problems

…'the foundations SUPPORT is removed as the soil shrinks which may stress the concrete enough to cause a crack…
cracks in basement walls should be repaired to reduce the potential for water intrusion

sure sure sure raise n slope, raise n slope, RAISE N slope the grade lol , go 'head, it should somewhat lessen the soil pressure against f-walls but the soil will still get saturated on longer, heavier rains, you aren’t going to control that and again when there are existing cracks in F walls etc, a) you are not calling them out b) your grade recommendation doesn’t do squat for them