Centennial Footings and Piers

Whatever a builder set level in Walnut Hills or Foxridge decades ago is still supposed to be level. Mortar joints are a ruler somebody left running across the front of your house, and when something under them gives up, they stop tracking straight. You can read that from the sidewalk with your hands in your pockets.

That's how most footing and pier calls here start. Somebody noticed a line that used to be true, or a post doing something new, and wants a straight answer about what's under it. Sometimes it's a support that never reached decent ground. Sometimes it's a downspout that has soaked one corner for thirty years. The evidence is outside, so outside is where we start.

Four lines on your house that are supposed to be straight

Down and up are opposite symptoms with the same cause

Around here, a heavy building tends to go down and a light one tends to come up. A house loaded with framing, brick, and furniture presses on soil that loses strength when it stays wet. A deck post or a stoop weighs almost nothing by comparison, so when the ground under it takes on water and gains volume, it just lifts what's sitting there.

Both problems trace back to the same short list. Gutters that dump beside the house. Grade that has settled into a trough along the wall over thirty years. A sprinkler zone throwing water at the foundation four mornings a week. In Homestead and Piney Creek, where landscaping has had decades to mature and the original grading vanished under mulch, that's nearly every call. Fix the water and the ground settles down. Skip it and the best pier work just moves the problem to the next post.

What happens before we quote a single hole

We measure. Floor elevations get shot with an instrument so the numbers are numbers instead of impressions. Cracks get width readings and a date. Then we open an inspection pit beside the suspect support, because how deep the original footing goes and what it bears on decides everything after. A porch column on a shallow pad poured in topsoil is a different repair than one on a proper footing that water undermined.

Only then do we talk about method. Sometimes it's helical piers turned down until torque says we've found capacity. Sometimes a drilled pier and a new cap. Sometimes we shore, dig out, and pour a wider spread footing at the right depth, which is often the cheapest honest answer under a light structure. Once in a while our engineer tells you to spend the money on drainage instead. We're fine delivering that.

Checks you can run yourself before you call anyone

• Sight down a brick course from one end of the wall and note where it stops being straight
• Set a marble on the floor near the post or corner you're worried about
• Watch a downspout during a real storm and see where the water actually goes
• Photograph the gap at each garage door jamb with the door closed
• Step on every walk slab along the house and mark the ones that rock
• Pencil a dated tick at the end of any crack so growth becomes evidence

Frost sets the calendar, mud sets the mood

We drill and pour year round. Frozen ground is slower to get through and the first couple of feet come out in chunks, but below that the auger finds the same soil it would find in June. What we won't do is set a footing on frozen material or pour into a hole with water standing in it, and both are common in a Front Range February.

Fall is the sweet spot. The ground is dry, holes hold their shape, and a yard recovers before winter. Late spring is the season we push back on, since saturated soil digs sloppy and reads misleading. Symptoms in April are often the year at its worst rather than the structure at its worst.