WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — It’s a simple upkeep that many may be unaware of. Ensuring your home’s foundation is well-taken care of is a task often overlooked but quite crucial.

“If you continue to let it go, you can be going from a $5 to $8,000 repair to a $50,000 repair,” AAA Guardian Foundation Repair Owner Jared Golden said.

And, no home can stand without a strong foundation.

It’s as simple as watering near the foundation for 25 to 30 minutes at a time, Golden said. In stage one drought restrictions, your foundation is exempt.

“You do want to water around your foundation,” he said. “We recommend putting a soaker hose down somewhere between 12 and 18 inches from the house and then water probably three to four times a week.”

With the record heat and dry land, Golden said that if you start to see dirt pull away from your house and cracks inside or outside doors starting to not close well, you might have a problem.

“The soil here has an expansion rate that’s really high,” the Guardian Foundation Repair owner said. “And so when it dries out, it will shrink like 70%. Everything that’s sitting on that soil that dried out is going to fall with it. And so that’s what happened. And that’s why I would tell you to continue to water around your house.”

Soil may look harmless, but if neglected, it can cause structural damage to the home.

“Catching this as early as possible, where you can come in and maybe catch one corner of the home and have to do work on it, where if you let that go a couple of years, I may have to do the entire wall,” Golden said.

For more information on how to protect the structural integrity of your home, visit AAA Guardian Foundation Repair’s website.