Diagnosis first · San Antonio & Central Texas · Lifetime transferable warranty on pier work

Foundation Crack Repair San Antonio TX

A crack is a symptom. The repair that lasts starts with the cause, which around here is expansive clay drying and swelling unevenly under the house. We measure your floor with a free elevation survey, stop the movement if the numbers say it’s active, and repair the crack once, after, so it stays repaired. About a third of the time the survey says no repair is needed at all, and that answer is free too. Start with a free foundation inspection.

Get My Free Crack Evaluation (210) 816-0034

Financing available through Acorn Finance. Check your rate in minutes, no credit-score impact →

Stair-step crack in brick at a wall corner above a doorway, where foundation movement has opened the mortar joints — The call that starts most crack repairs. A stair-step pattern in the brick says something moved; the elevation survey says how far and whether it is still moving.

What you’re probably looking at

The four cracks homeowners search for.

Stair-step brick cracks

Diagonal cracks climbing the mortar joints, usually near a corner. The brick veneer is reporting a height difference in the slab behind it. How to read the staircase →

Diagonal drywall cracks

Cracks rising from the top corners of doors and windows, where wall strain concentrates when the foundation deflects. Why the corners crack first →

Cracks in the slab itself

Hairlines in the garage or under pulled carpet are usually curing shrinkage. Wide, widening, or offset cracks earn a measurement. Hairline, shrinkage, or structural →

Corner pop at the slab edge

A chipped or spalled exterior slab corner. Often cosmetic and often confused with settlement, which is exactly why it’s worth knowing the difference. What corner pop means →

Diagonal stair step crack crossing brick veneer near a porch downspout — A diagonal crack stepping through the brick near a porch, found during a recent inspection.

If you want to triage before we come out, how to tell if foundation cracks are serious walks the full inspector’s read, direction, width, and company. And if the cracks showed up, or closed up, right after a storm, that whiplash pattern has its own explanation in what heavy rain does to foundation cracks.

A crack wide enough for fingertips

Measurements before method

The elevation survey decides what the crack needs.

A crack tells you something moved. It doesn’t tell you how far, in which direction, or whether it’s still moving, and those three answers are the whole repair decision. So every crack call starts the same way: a free foundation inspection with a floor elevation survey, a grid of readings across the house that shows where the slab sits relative to its original plane, by the tenth of an inch.

Wide horizontal crack across a textured wall below a ceiling vent — An open horizontal crack running the width of the wall, found during a recent inspection.

The readings sort every crack into one of three verdicts. About a third of our inspections end with no repair needed, old movement that finished years ago, and you get that in writing. When the movement is finished but the finish materials are torn, the fix is masonry and monitoring, repointed mortar or a drywall patch, a few hundred dollars, not a few thousand. And when the survey shows a corner or edge genuinely low and still trending, the durable fix is piers under the affected run, priced at $600 to $1,000 per pier, with a settled corner typically taking 4 to 6 of them.

What we won’t do is quote piers off a crack photo. The crack earns the measurement; only the measurement earns a repair plan.

Inspector holding a tablet showing a color-coded floor elevation map during a foundation crack evaluation — The instrument that decides it. The elevation map separates cosmetic cracks from structural ones.

When the movement is active

Steel and hybrid piers stop the movement that opens cracks.

An active crack means the soil under that part of the house is still moving, and no surface repair survives that. The fix is to carry the load past the active clay entirely, on piers driven down to soil that has proved it can hold. We install two systems. Steel piers are driven to verified refusal, the deep, load-certain option for the heavy clay sides of town. Hybrid piers start with a driven steel starter and finish with concrete sections, a middle path on price that still reaches load-bearing ground. Both carry a lifetime transferable warranty, and both mean fewer re-opened cracks and fewer repeat repairs down the road. Every completed repair also gets a yearly performance follow-up inspection, where we re-check elevations against the job baseline.

Broken stucco and concrete corner revealing a dark void beneath the beam — The corner has broken away far enough to open a void under the beam, found during a recent inspection.

Steel piers →

Driven to verified refusal, the deep and load-certain option

Hybrid piers →

Steel start and concrete finish, the middle path on price

The part homeowners actually see

Fix the cause, then repair the crack once.

The order matters more than the materials. Patch a crack over moving soil and you’ll patch it again next summer; patch it after the movement has stopped and the patch holds. As a settled section lifts back toward plane in small measured stages, many cracks tighten on their own, stair-step brick cracks pull back together and drywall hairlines close. What remains gets repaired once: broken mortar joints are ground out and repointed, drywall is patched and floated, and torn finishes are made good. If the survey found finished movement in the first place, this cosmetic scope is the whole job, and we’ll say so. If a bid you’re holding skips the measurement and goes straight to piers, a free second opinion is cheap insurance.

From a Google review

“From the inspection to the recommendations, everything was clear. They installed about 15 piers, the cracks closed, and the doors are working properly again.”
Tatty · ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Google review

Crack specifics

Foundation crack questions, answered straight.

Are cracks in my foundation serious?

Usually they're evidence, not emergency. Most cracks in Central Texas homes come from expansive clay drying and swelling unevenly under the house, and plenty of them mark movement that finished years ago. The way to know is a floor elevation survey, which reads where the slab actually sits, by the tenth of an inch. About a third of our inspections end with no repair needed, and you get that answer in writing, for free.

How much does foundation crack repair cost?

It depends on what the crack means. If the elevation survey shows old, finished movement, the fix is mortar repair or patching plus monitoring, usually a few hundred dollars. If the survey shows a corner or edge still moving, the repair is piers under the affected run at $600 to $1,000 per pier, and a settled corner typically takes 4 to 6 of them. The free inspection turns those ranges into a firm per-pier number before you commit to anything.

Can you just fill or seal the crack instead of installing piers?

You can patch any crack, but a patch doesn't stop the movement that opened it. If the soil under that edge is still shifting, a filled crack re-opens by next summer, or tears a new path an inch away. That's why we measure first. Cracks over stable ground get cosmetic repair and nothing else. Cracks over moving ground get the movement stopped first, then a repair that actually holds.

Which pier systems do you use to stop crack-causing movement?

Steel and hybrid piers. Steel piers are driven to verified refusal, below the clay layer that moves with the seasons. Hybrid piers start with a driven steel starter and finish with concrete sections, a middle path on price that still reaches load-bearing ground. Both carry our lifetime transferable warranty. The elevation map and the soil at your address decide which one we recommend.

Do the cracks close after foundation repair?

Often, partly. As the settled section lifts back toward plane in measured stages, drywall cracks and stair-step brick cracks frequently tighten on their own. Finishes that adapted to years of movement don't always close completely, so the last step is a one-time cosmetic repair, repointed mortar joints and patched drywall, done after the readings confirm the structure has stopped moving.

From real inspections