Foundation problems by symptom · Central Texas
Foundation Problems by Symptom
Start with whatever your house is doing. A door that stopped latching, a hallway running downhill toward an outside wall, a crack leaving a window corner on the diagonal, a soft patch over a crawl space. Each page below takes one symptom in one city, says what the ground there does to a house, and separates seasonal movement from settlement. About a third of our inspections end with no repair needed.
Soft patches over a crawl space
Crawl space floors
A crawl space carries the house on a grid of separate posts, blocks and shim stacks, and each one answers only to the dirt beneath it. One support settles and you get a dip in one room with firm floor eight feet away. That is why these floors read as soft patches rather than one long slope. Most of the repair happens down there with no excavation. Piers come in only where a support ran out of competent ground.
Doors that catch, windows that bind
Sticking doors and windows
The door did not change shape. Its opening did. When the slab edge or the framing under one part of the house moves, the frame above goes out of square and the leaf drags on the jamb. One door rubbing through a muggy stretch and freeing up later is swollen wood. Three catching at the same top corner, stiffer every year, is a frame the floor pushed out of square.
Floors that run downhill
Uneven or sloping floors
A floor slopes because the support under part of it dropped relative to the rest. Over deep clay the perimeter dries first, gives up volume, and takes the slab edge down with it, so the floor becomes a ramp running toward an outside wall. Over thin stony ground it is usually one area that lost bearing or a fill pad that settled. Feel misleads. Readings do not.
Cracks that lean off a corner
Diagonal drywall cracks
Doors and windows are holes in an otherwise stiff wall, so when the wall racks the stress runs to the corners of those openings and the board tears away on the diagonal. A hairline that opens in a dry August and closes after a wet spring is the seasonal swing. The ones that earn a measurement cluster at a few openings, lean the same way, and come back wider each year.
The repair itself
Foundation piering
A slab home carries its weight on a thickened edge called the grade beam, and that beam sits on whatever soil is under it. The crew digs an access pit, seats a bracket under the beam, and presses pier sections down until they stop advancing. That run of beam then rides on the pier, not the dirt beside it. Nothing about the ground changes. The house stops being supported by it.
What every one of these pages ends with
The same visit. An ICC-certified inspector reads floor heights across the house in tenths of an inch, maps the cracks, and reads the perimeter drainage, then says plainly what is structural and what is cosmetic. The dated readings are yours either way.
When the map justifies support, we set steel and hybrid piers, $600 to $1,000 each installed. Those are the only piers we set. We do not offer concrete piers. The count comes off the map, not the square footage. The piers carry a lifetime transferable warranty, and a performance follow-up inspection every year re-reads the floor to confirm the correction held.
Common questions
Foundation problems, answered straight.
Measure it before anyone scopes it.
A free inspection with floor elevations in tenths of an inch and a written read on what is structural, with a firm number only if the map calls for one.
Now booking free inspections in Central Texas.
Free inspection request
Tell us what you're seeing.
We'll call to schedule, usually within one business day. Prefer to talk now? (210) 816-0034.
- 60–90 minutes on site, including the elevation survey
- Written summary whether or not repair is needed
- No-pressure pricing with firm numbers, no same-day-only discounts