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Learning Center · Money & Hiring

Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Foundation Contractor

7 min readUpdated June 2026By Ricardo Chamorro · ICC-certified Residential Building Contractor

ELEVATION DATA

numbers, not adjectives

MARKED PIER PLAN

every pier justified

WARRANTY DOCUMENT

transferable, in writing

A bid missing any of the three isn't a bid — it's a guess with a signature line.

The three artifacts every honest bid produces. The ten questions below are how you get them.

Foundation repair has a trust problem, and it earned it: commissioned inspectors, pier counts that grow with the salesman's quota, warranties from companies that dissolve and re-incorporate. The defense isn't cynicism — it's ten specific questions that take five minutes and expose a weak bid faster than any review site. Print this. Ask everyone, including us. And if the deeper question is whether to trust this industry at all, is foundation repair a rip-off is the longer, honest answer. Collecting bids to ask them about? How many estimates should you get covers how many and what to compare.

The ten questions

01
Will you measure floor elevations before recommending anything?
The only acceptable answer is yes, with a device, on a grid. No elevation data = no diagnosis = no honest pier count. This single question filters more bad bids than the other nine combined.
02
Can you mark every proposed pier on a drawing and tie each to a reading?
Honest scopes map piers to low readings. 'We pier the whole perimeter to be safe' is not engineering; it's a multiplier.
03
When would you NOT recommend your preferred method?
Companies that install one pier type have one answer to every soil. A good answer names real conditions — load, depth, soil profile — where their default loses.
04
What's the per-pier price, and what exactly does it include?
Per-pier transparency lets you compare bids apples-to-apples. Bundled 'project pricing' that won't decompose usually hides the margin in the count.
05
Is the warranty transferable, and what voids it?
Get the document, not the slogan. Look for: life-of-structure vs. years, transfer fee, and the exclusions list — then check the company has existed long enough for its warranty to mean anything.
06
What happens if a warranted pier settles again?
The answer should be: we come back and adjust it, parts and labor, free. Anything mushier — 'prorated', 'materials only', 'service call fee' — prices the warranty's real value.
07
Who actually does the work — employees or subs?
Either can be fine; not knowing is not. Ask who supervises, who you call mid-job, and whether the inspector and the crew lead ever talk to each other.
08
Will you pull permits and arrange engineering where required?
The answer varies legitimately by city — what shouldn't vary is clarity. 'Permits are your problem' on a job that needs them is a red flag with paperwork attached.
09
What's your plan for my landscaping, sprinklers, and cleanup?
Listen for specifics: sod cut and saved, tarped spoil, sprinkler repairs included, magnet sweep. Vague reassurance here predicts a rough week at your house.
10
Can I have a few days to decide?
The most diagnostic question on the list. Foundations move in seasons; any discount that expires today exists to stop you from asking the other nine questions.

How to read the answers

You're not grading politeness — you're listening for whether the company's process produces the three artifacts in the diagram: elevation data, a marked pier plan, and a warranty document. A bidder who hedges on question 1 will improvise the rest. A bidder who aces 1 through 9 but pressures you on 10 is telling you the math doesn't survive a second opinion. And a bidder who answers all ten cleanly has earned the right to be compared on price — which is the only thing price should ever decide between.

Start your bid pile with a free inspection that answers all ten before you ask — elevation map, marked plan, and the warranty in writing.Get the First Honest Bid

From real Central Texas jobs and inspections

Foundation repair technician standing in a hand-dug pier pit beneath a slab, looking up from the excavation
Technician standing chest-deep in a hand-dug pier pit, looking up at camera — ask who actually performs the work: employees or subcontractors.
Crew member hand-digging a foundation pier hole beside a home with a shovel and protective tarp
Worker digging a pier hole beside the house, shovel in foreground — ask whether crews dig by hand or bring heavy equipment through your yard.
Crew member hand-digging a square pier hole beside a foundation for pier installation
Hand-digging a square pier hole with a shovel — hand digging protects utilities; ask how the contractor locates lines.
Technician working at the bottom of a deep hand-dug pier pit beneath a home's slab foundation
Technician working head-down at the bottom of a deep pier pit — ask how deep piers go and what proof of depth you receive.
Hand-dug pit exposing the grade beam beneath a brick home's foundation, ready for pier installation
Hand-dug pier pit beneath exposed grade beam, boot at frame edge — ask to see the exposed grade beam before pilings are pressed.

Straight answers

Related questions.

Choose an inspection-first contractor who measures floor elevations before recommending anything, marks every proposed pier on a drawing tied to a specific reading, quotes a per-pier price you can compare line for line, and backs the work with a transferable, life-of-structure warranty in plain English — then confirm the license, liability insurance, and reviews are real. Motmot Foundation Repair in San Antonio built its whole process around answering these ten questions, so you can hold every bidder, us included, to the same standard.
Compare foundation repair companies pier-for-pier against the same elevation data, not bottom line against bottom line. A lower price usually means fewer piers supporting less of your house, a weaker or non-transferable warranty, or margin hidden in a bundled quote. Ask each contractor to mark proposed piers on the same drawing, state a per-pier price, and hand over the warranty document — the honest bid survives that comparison, and in San Antonio Motmot's free inspection produces all three so you can line ours up against anyone's.
Before hiring a residential foundation repair company: get a measured inspection with floor-elevation readings (Motmot's is free in San Antonio and Central Texas), collect two or three bids and compare them pier-for-pier, verify the contractor's license and insurance, read the warranty for transferability and exclusions, check reviews for cleanup and warranty follow-through, and refuse any discount that expires the same day. Foundations move in seasons, so you're entitled to a few days to decide.
For any repair beyond a couple of piers, yes — two or three. But compare pier-for-pier against the same elevation data, not bottom line against bottom line. A cheaper bid with six fewer piers isn't cheaper; it's smaller, and you should know why.
Useful for patterns (cleanup, communication, warranty service honored years later), useless for engineering judgment. A company can have five stars for niceness and still pier by the brochure. Reviews screen for character; the ten questions screen for competence.

Keep reading

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