Foundation Repair, French Drain Installation & Crawl Space Encapsulation in Fort Worth, TX

This is the biggest call we get here, and the reason is under the house rather than in it. The clay across this part of Texas takes on water and swells, then gives it up in a dry summer and shrinks back. A slab sitting on that is being lifted and dropped by the weather. Around Wedgwood, where the post-war streets are all slab, that is nearly every call.

Steel piers are driven down past that layer to material that does not move with the season, then the section is loaded onto them and brought back toward level. How far it comes back depends on the house. Where drainage is feeding the problem, that gets fixed at the same time, or the ground keeps cycling underneath the repair.

The first visit is measuring, not quoting. Levels through the rooms, a look at the grade outside, and a walk round the brick to see where it has parted. In Fairmount the houses are pier and beam instead, and the answer there is a different job entirely. You get the number in writing before anybody talks about price.

Here the enemy is not water itself, it is uneven water. One side of the house stays soaked because that is where the roof drains, the other bakes dry in August, and the slab is asked to bridge the difference. Around Arlington Heights, where the lots slope toward the street, the low side is usually the one that has moved.

A trench is opened where the water already runs, lined so soil cannot silt the pipe up, and a perforated pipe bedded in washed stone. The fall carries the water well clear of the house without a pump. Roof leaders get tied in rather than dumping at a corner where the ground will drink it.

It is the cheapest thing on this list and on a lot of houses it is the whole fix, because evening out the moisture is what stops the movement in the first place. What it will not do is lift a corner that has already dropped. In Wedgwood we often quote drainage on its own first and watch what the house does over a season before anybody spends money on piers.

Most of Fort Worth is slab, but the older inner neighborhoods are not. Where there is a crawl space there is bare dirt under the house giving off moisture all day, and vents that pull humid Texas air into a cool space where it condenses. In Fairmount and Mistletoe Heights, where the houses are pier and beam, that is the usual story behind a smell nobody can place.

Heavy liner goes down across the floor and carries up the piers and the perimeter, every seam taped and the top edge sealed. Old vents get closed permanently. Standing water is drained and pumped out before anything gets sealed over it, and a dehumidifier holds the space at a set level.

You notice it upstairs within a few days, in the smell and in floors that stop feeling cold. It will not straighten a floor that has already sagged, and it does nothing at all for a slab house, which has no crawl to seal in the first place. We will tell you which of the two you have standing there, before anybody quotes you for anything.

The older inner neighborhoods were built before slabs took over, and those houses sit on beams carried by piers with a crawl space underneath. They fail differently. A pier settles into ground that shrank, a beam end rots where it meets masonry, or a previous owner shimmed something that has since worked loose. In Fairmount and Ryan Place this is most of what we look at.

Failed piers are replaced or reset on footings that reach past the moving layer, sagging beams are picked up onto new posts, and soft beam ends get sistered or swapped. Lifting happens gradually across visits, because a house that settled into a shape over eighty years will crack if you hurry it back.

The advantage of pier and beam is that it can be adjusted later, which a slab cannot. The disadvantage is that the crawl underneath has to stay dry or you will be looking at the same posts again in a few years. Over in Mistletoe Heights we usually sort the drainage in the same visit rather than treat it as a separate job.

A supply line running under a slab can leak for months without anybody noticing. The water goes into ground that swells where it lands, so one part of the house lifts while the rest stays put, and the first sign is usually a door that stops closing rather than anything wet. Around Arlington Heights, where a lot of the plumbing is original, it turns up more than people expect.

The leak gets located before anything is opened, so the work is one hole rather than a search. From there it is either a repair through the slab or a reroute overhead, depending on the run and how much pipe is involved. Then the ground is given time to give the water back before anyone judges how far the house has moved.

This is also the one foundation problem in Texas your insurance may actually pay toward, because the damage is sudden rather than gradual. We document what we find either way. Over in Meadowbrook we have seen a single leak account for movement three owners had blamed on the drought.

Driveways, walks and patios sit on the same ground the house does, but with none of the weight to hold them steady, so they move first and further. That is why the drive can drop an inch while the slab indoors reads fine. Around Westcliff and Candleridge the flatwork is often the earliest sign anything is moving at all.

Small ports are drilled through the slab and material injected underneath, filling the void and lifting the panel back to grade. It takes foot traffic the same day and a car within hours, which on a driveway is what usually decides it. The ports get patched and the original concrete stays where it is, which is where the saving comes from.

Worth working out where the water goes first, because lifting a panel does not change whatever moved the soil underneath it. If a downspout is still emptying beside it, the void simply reopens and the panel drops again. We would rather sort the drainage and the lift together than come back to the same square of concrete next year and charge you twice.