We Recheck Your Foundation Every Year After Repair

After we finish a repair, we come back. Once a year, Motmot returns to completed jobs for an annual foundation performance inspection, a follow-up visit where we re-shoot the floor elevations at the same reference points from your repair, compare the readings against the baseline in your job file, walk the drainage around the house, and check the cracks we have on camera. The results get logged, your copy of the record gets updated, and the whole visit runs about an hour. This is standing practice on our completed jobs, and it is the part of the work that keeps a good repair provable years later.

What happens at the annual visit

The core of the visit is the elevation re-shoot. During your repair we measured the floors at a grid of reference points and recorded a baseline on the day the lift finished. The annual visit puts the instrument back on those same points. Comparing this year's readings against that baseline, and against last year's, tells us more than any single crack ever could, because it separates a house that is holding from a house that is drifting a fraction of an inch each season.

Around the outside, the inspector walks the drainage and moisture picture. Gutters, downspout extensions, grading against the slab, soaker hoses, new flower beds, irrigation changes, anything that decides where water sits. Inside and out, cracks get checked against the photos in your file. A hairline that has sat unchanged for three years is a note. A fresh separation above a door frame is a measurement and a photo. Either way it goes in the record instead of in someone's memory.

You do not have to prepare anything for it. The measuring points are already mapped in your file, interior access takes a few minutes, and the rest of the visit happens outside. If a reading looks off, we say so on the spot, in plain terms, and put it in writing the same day. Most visits end the way you would hope, with the readings sitting within a hair of last year's and the drainage looking the way we left it.

Why a yearly recheck matters on this clay

The piers under your repaired sections are built for this ground. Steel and hybrid pier systems reach depths the seasonal moisture swings do not control, which is why the repaired sections hold and why we back them for the life of the structure. The clay everywhere else keeps doing what Central Texas clay does, shrinking through the dry months and swelling back after the rains, every year the house stands.

So when something new shows up a year or three after a repair, the usual culprit is not the piers. It is a drainage or watering habit that slipped. A downspout extension that got knocked off during mowing season. A soaker hose that was retired after the first wet spring. A new bed built up against the slab that quietly changed the grading. Small things, and each one is a quick fix when it is caught early. That is what the walk-around is for, and the habits themselves are covered in our foundation watering guide and the Central Texas maintenance checklist.

What the yearly visit gives you

Three things, mainly. First, a documented elevation history. Most homes never get one measured floor survey in their lifetime, let alone one every year against a fixed baseline. Second, small issues caught while they are small. Movement announces itself in tenths of an inch long before it announces itself in drywall, and the re-shoot sees it at the tenths stage. Third, a warranty file that stays current. When you sell the house, the buyer's inspector gets a baseline, annual readings, and dated photos, and the lifetime transferable warranty moves to the new owner with real paperwork behind it.

There is a quieter benefit too, which is that nothing gets the chance to surprise anyone. A foundation file with yearly readings has no gaps for a future buyer, an appraiser, or another inspector to wonder about. The story of the house is measured, dated, and sitting in one folder.

How the visit and the warranty work together

The warranty covers the piers. If a section we piered ever settles again, we re-level on the original piers at no charge, for the life of the structure, whoever owns the home at the time. The annual inspection protects everything around that promise, the drainage the clay answers to, the un-piered sections that were doing fine when we left, and the documentation that makes any future claim a measurement instead of an argument. One is the written promise. The other is the habit that keeps the promise boring.

If your repair was done by a company that has since disappeared, the same idea applies through our warranty takeover program, which starts with a full re-inspection and includes the same yearly performance check. And if you have never had a repair and simply want to know where your floors stand, the first inspection is free, and about a third of the time it ends with us telling you no repair is needed.