Foundation repair in Clovis CA - a steady house and doors that close again

Most people call us after they notice something small, like a door that suddenly sticks, a crack angling up from a window corner or a floor that feels a little off, and that's usually the house settling. The price turns on how many piers your foundation needs, whether we're only stopping the movement or lifting the house, how easy it is to dig along that side and how much crack patching follows. The schedule mostly turns on the engineer's review and how much digging your house needs, and the estimate visit is where you get your own figure.

I start by talking through with you whether your house just needs to stop settling or needs to come back up, because that one choice shapes the whole job. We plan for an engineer to look over the repair plan for your home, so the piers go where your foundation actually needs them. Then our crew digs beside the foundation, sets the piers and either holds the house where it is or brings it up slowly, and once the work's done I go through your doors and windows with you to check they open and close the way they should. After that we backfill and clean up so your yard isn't left torn up.

Foundation movement rarely stays in the foundation. When a house shifts, a brick chimney tied to it can crack or start to lean, and our chimney repair work fixes that once the house is steady. Cracked mortar in brick walls is common after settling too, and tuckpointing clears out the damaged joints and packs in fresh mortar that suits your brick, which keeps water out of the wall.

A lot of the older houses around Clovis sit up off the ground, with steps up to the front door and a crawl space underneath, and the California Earthquake Authority says houses like that can shift off their foundations when the ground shakes. A house on posts and piers without a continuous perimeter foundation, a solid wall running all the way around, can shift or even collapse, and the authority says adding a braced, bolted foundation, or bracing the crawl space walls and bolting the house down where those walls exist, will strengthen it. If your house is built that way, it's worth weighing that option while you're already thinking about the foundation. When a job needs a permit, we take care of it with the city or county office for your address, and we talk it through with you at the estimate.

We meet the same raised older homes on jobs in Old Fig Garden and Sanger, along with newer slab houses where the first sign is often a cracked garage floor or a slider that drags. Either way, the signs usually look alike: doors that start to stick and cracks that run off the corners of windows and doors.