Phisherman wrote:

On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 11:53:08 -0600, "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.


The ground around my house has been moving, and it continues to move.
I had my driveway slabs jacked up and leveled last year ($1500). It
was perfect after the job, but after a year there is more movement.
Hopefully I can go another 5-10 years before its needs another job.
The company can not really guarantee the ground will stop heaving or
moving.

There are different types of ground movement. The most common type is in
areas with expansive clay soils and those are relatively straightforward
to deal with since it doesn't generally involve sideways shifting or
undermining. The issue is uneven expansion and contraction of the soil
due to uneven moisture content, i.e. the perimeter near where the ground
is exposed to the air dries faster and thus shrinks faster leaving the
perimeter of the house to drop relative to the interior. The deeper you
install the piers the more stable the soil moisture and therefore the
more stable the soil the pier rests on.