Diagnosis first. Price second.
Most quotes you'll get price a repair before anybody has established what's causing the movement. A repair quoted before the cause is known is a guess with a number on it. Here's how we do it instead.
Four steps, always
in this order.
Measure the whole floor
We shoot elevations across the entire footprint — not just the room with the crack you called about. A foundation problem is a map, and you can't read it from one corner.
Find the cause
Movement is a symptom. We identify the driver — drainage, grading, a plumbing leak, bearing failure, erosion — before anybody talks about price. A repair quoted before the cause is known is a guess.
Stabilize to bearing stratum
Piers driven past the active clay zone to soil that doesn't move seasonally, then lift to practical maximum. Practical, not theoretical — chasing perfectly level on a long-settled house breaks finishes.
Fix the water that caused it
Stabilizing without correcting drainage buys you time, not a solution. Grading, French drains, gutter discharge, retaining walls, shoreline armoring — whatever was moving water toward your structure.
Why foundations move here
Expansive clay takes on water and swells, then dries out and shrinks. Your footings ride that cycle twice a year. It isn't the wet or the dry that cracks a foundation — it's the travel between them, and it's almost never even across the whole footprint. One corner lifts while another drops, and the structure has to absorb the difference.
Near the lake it gets harder. The moisture in the ground never fully settles, slopes shed water toward the structure, and banks erode from underneath where nobody can see them. That's why we treat drainage and shoreline work as part of a foundation repair rather than an upsell after it.
What we'll ask you to look for
None of these are conclusive on their own. Two or more together usually means something is moving.
Stair-step cracks in brick
Cracks that climb the mortar joints in a staircase pattern. Brick doesn't fail like that on its own — the ground under it moved.
Doors and windows out of square
Sticking, dragging, or a door that swings open on its own. The frame is no longer a rectangle because the wall around it isn't level.
Floors that aren't level
A marble that rolls. A gap under the furniture on one side of the room. Slope you can feel underfoot is slope well past the tolerance.
Gaps at trim and baseboard
Wedge-shaped gaps opening between baseboard and floor, or crown and ceiling. The trim stayed put; the structure it was nailed to did not.
Cracks across the slab
Hairlines are normal. Cracks you can fit a coin into, cracks with a lip you can feel, or cracks that keep getting longer are not.
Chimney or porch pulling away
An outbuilding, porch slab or chimney separating from the house. Attached structures on separate footings move first and move most.
Start with the measurement
The assessment is free and there's no obligation. If your slab is fine, we'll tell you it's fine and leave.