On Jan 18, 11:53*am, "HeyBub" wrote:
My son's two-story home has a cracked foundation with attendant settling.

He noticed a crew working on a house a few doors down and had a chat with
the crew chief. The crew chief (named Guadeloupe) came and did a quick
survey of my son's home. The chief said the problem could be fixed with 18
piers (each going down, in this soil, about twenty feet) and that his
experienced crew (Juan, Jesus, Allesandro, and Moishe) could do the work
over a two-day period.

For $3,000.

This is in dramatic contrast to the presumed cost of $15,000+ from the kinds
of firms one normally thinks of when contemplating house leveling.

My son's rhetorical thought - and with which I agree - is "what could go
wrong?" Even if the leveling didn't "take" and a more professional firm had
to come and make "adjustments," the heavy-lifting (pardon the bad metaphor)
would have already been done.

I tend to think that house-leveling is similar to replacing a breaker-box -
not rocket surgery, but intimidating simply because it is so unusual, and
that common sense plus the right tools, in experienced hands, are mostly
what are essential.

Couple of other bits of knowledge: Guadeloupe is the brother of my son's
neighbor and Guadeloupe knows my son has a gun.

Any random thoughts on the subject would be appreciated.

I leveled my house but did it maybe 1/8" at a time over days to move
it. I took a month to move it maybe 2" so walls glass did not crack.
Do doors, windows close now. Cheap is good, but he needs to learn
whats up so all goes well, even the 15000 guys may screw up.