Early Foundation Fears
When I bought my house in 1992, there was suspicion that it would probably need foundation repair. I bought it from the Resolution Trust Corporation, which provided absolutely no warranties. Forms needed to be signed indicating I understood that. There was a ridge in the master bedroom carpeting that looked like a foundation issue.
But I did not remove that carpeting until 2014 when I did a grand remodeling of the bedrooms and hallway. It turned out there was no deep visible crack in the bedroom floor. The ridge in the carpeting was caused by a small bump about the size of a tiny pebble which had caused the carpeting to fold in that peculiar way. I was greatly relieved. I was making pretty good money then, and I could have much more easily paid for foundation repair if it was necessary, but it didn't appear to be.
But by 2022, sometime after the Texas Deep Freeze, the situation was different. Gaps started opening up between the master bedroom western wall and the ceiling letting daylight into the master bedroom. At first I believed this had to be an issue with the roof, and I hired a home inspector.
The inspector checked a lot of things, and even went into the attic. He used a laser level on the floors. And he gave me the bad news. The gap had nothing to do with the roof. It was caused by parts of the foundation footing falling.
My usual contractor suggested I look into foam leveling.
I looked around for top companies and ended up contacting Baird Foundation Repair. They looked like the most solid and reputable company around, and that was important in work that might require the backing of a lifetime warranty. They advertised foam leveling. But when I contacted them, they said they only used foam leveling on driveways and patios. Homes needed better support, and foundation piers were required.
I was impressed that they didn't try to sell me what I had asked for. That shows they are hones, I figured. Perhaps too easily, I selected Baird to do the work.
Baird came out and measured my floor and looked at the foundation from the outside. I told them I wanted the least amount of work done to fix the problem in the master bedroom, I wasn't much concerned about the cracks elsewhere (and all over the house, actually). After all, it was already a 39 year old house and some cracks were to be expected, and I could just fill them. But a gap opening up to the outside was a big deal, I thought.
They determined the key source of trouble was not just below where the cracks were, but at the southwest corner of the house and half of the southwest side. The minimum estimate just to fix that problem would be about $7500. However, they recommended much larger fixes. They recommended putting piers around further around the house, and ultimately including the house and attached garage. The full option was $44,000. I agreed to the lowest cost estimate.
But then I took a look around the house myself. It seemed I could see underneath the footings along the entire south side of the house AND the attached garage (which are actually on a unified slab.). And also more along the southwest side. So I called Baird and asked for all that to be included, and I got a new estimate of about $19,000. I went for that, figuring it was reasonable that the combination of southern sunlight and erosion along the south side had caused this issue.
More History
Ever since I bought the house I had been worried about 'preserving' the foundation, which I thought was already cracked (until 2014 as described above). I ran soaker hoses along the the southern and western sides with this in mind. But it always seemed that whenever I ran the soaker hoses, the cracks in the wall on the inside got worse, and the outside didn't look any better either.
I considered the possibility of an underground watering system. But the only company I found to do that work was in Houston, 250 miles away. And I read that there was an issue that the underground systems could clog and then be expensive to repair, so I gave up on that idea.
But around 2013 when I had constructed "The Brick Pool House" (actually, a glorified storage building with standing seam metal roof, Hardyplank siding, 6 inch walls and foam insulation, and a foundation thick enough to support a 3 story building, everything built as well as I could imagine) I decided to add sprinklers all around the house. Not only would this keep the grass growing consistently all year long, it would keep the soil uniformly moist and prevent further foundation cracking, I believed.
But over time, the neighbor's trees grew up on the south side and no matter what I did I could not grow grass there very well. By 2018 or so it was a lost cause. This was also true around the southwest corner of the house. But, without thinking about it very much, I still kept running the sprinklers. I thought this was continuing to moisten the soil, but just as much it was adding to erosion.
The neighbor's trees along the northwest side were also leading to mass grass die off. By 2022 there was no more grass around the northwest corner of the house either. But I continued to run the sprinklers for branch #4 which also included key parts of the back and front of the house where there still was grass.
I was not paying attention to the shading, lack of grass, and erosion all around the south, west, and north sides of the house.
A lot of digging was done around the southwest corner because of the electrical box and telephone and cable connections there. The digging included:
1) Fixing the (entirely broken) ground rod connection in 2009 when I was adding a whole house surge supressor.
2) Running power to the Brick Pool House, which required a 2-3 foot deep trench from the electrical panel to the building.
3) Adding antenna grounds for my 3 TV, Radio, and Shortwave antennas on the north side of the house. Those antennas had local grounds (requiring digging 3 foot deep holes around the northwest corner of the house too), and a 3-4 foot trench constructed in the middle of the back yard for a "bonding" wire to bond the antenna grounds to the main house grounding rod).
Little did I think that all this digging around the southwest and northwest corners of the house would ever lead to any issues. But they were probably a contributing factor, since once the very heavy clay soil is dug out, the soil put back in is never as dense or solid. And by 2016 or so there was little or no grass to hold the soil in place either.
In 2002 I installed gutters in the front of the house and the adjacent side of the house. Once I had installed the gutters, I put the issue out of mind. There were no leaves to clog the gutters, and I did not think I had to worry about them. But for many years, the gutter along the west side of the house was not working at all. I only noticed this the first time around 2019, after I was retired. The gutters had clogged from issues related to faulty original design AND clogging caused by roof granuals. They were not working, and instead of water being diverted to my 3 foot splash block, it was just falling over the gutter along the entire west side of house (note: this is only about 15 feet because the attached garage covers most of the front of the house.).
Meanwhile, I installed Rain Handlers along the west side of the house. Rain Handlers were supposed to convert water falling off the roof into a fine mist. It sort of seemed to work OK for the first one I installed in front of the master bedroom window, but I wasn't paying much attention. I mainly just assumed they were working, and installed Rain Handlers along the entire west side of the house. It was only much later I determined the Rain Handlers were not working at all. Instead of creating a "fine mist" they were simply displacing the water about 4 inches further out and causing great erosion at that point.
I now see erosion and caused by my inattention to all these points as the the major factor ultimately responsible for most if not all of my foundation damage. Also the holes dug around the southwest and northeast corners, and the lack of grass to keep the soil firm and free of erosion.
Baird in 2022
I was very impressed by the work Baird did in 2022. They sent out a team of five workers, and spent a day creating big holes with for the new piers. On a second day they came out again and did adjustments. After all the adjustments were done, the gap in the bedroom wall closed up, and they took new measurements inside. They did a perfect job in filling in the cement in the driveway where they had added a new pier. The piers ranged from 25 to 35 feet deep, and I also asked for and paid for additional backfill dirt, and as a result the total cost came to around $21,000. They still recommended I put piers around the rest of the house and garage but I figured that was not necessary. Their engineer told me I could expect "setting" for around 30 days. I did see slight expansion in cracks on the north side of the house but nothing to be very concerned about, I thought.
Later Issues
But by 2025, the situation was different. The cracking in the northwest corner was not looking good. It was around 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch between the inside wall. No daylight was being let in, but it began to worry me.
Any dripped water on the kitchen countertop was also running quickly down the countertop and towards the west. This had probably been happening for quite some time, but it also must have been getting worse, and I first noticed it in 2024.
Finally, if I opened the sliding glass door about 4 inches, it would keep on sliding nearly all the way open. This was the most worrisome thing of all.
I was wondering if I should have gotten Baird to put piers around the entire house as they recommended. I figured the price might have gone way up since 2022 and was very worried about that. So I called Baird for another estimate.
Baird in 2025
The Baird estimator came out and agreed I needed more foundation work, continuing to recommend I put piers around the entire house and garage. But the minimum job to fix the largest depression and cracking around the northwest corner in the kitchen, would cost around $9000. I asked what it would cost to include the front of the house as well, where there had always been minor cracking issues near the wall and ceiling, and front door related issues as well. I was pleasantly surprised it would only cost $14,000. It did not seem like the price had gone up since 2022 as I had greatly feared.
I felt it best that I now put piers around the rest of the house (while I could still afford it) but not including the north side and front of garage which would push the cost to $25,000. The north side of the garage has a 3 foot wide walkway in front of it (in addition to the gutters) and the front of the garage has a cement driveway, and hardly any water falls towards the front anyway because the garage roof slopes to the sides. Erosion is basically not a problem there. And the measurements taken in 2022 showed the front northeast corner of the garage was actually (and not surprisingly) higher than the rest of the house, probably because of all that protection from erosion.
Baird sent a crew of 4 people, headed by Daniel Montoya, to do the work. They knocked it off in about 5 hours from 9:30 am to 2:30 pm.
When the piers had been installed, Daniel came to me telling me the work was done. But there had been no "leveling" done in the northwest corner.
Daniel said, "I understood you as saying you wanted to keep the costs down, so no leveling."
I corrected him, "I wanted no leveling around most of the house, and especially in the front where it could affect the drain and cause me to spend a lot of money on drain repair, but I did want the northwest corner of the house lifted just enough that the sliding door would not open by itself (as I then demonstrated to him).
OK, he said, and proceeded to raise the three piers on the north side, including the corner one. I though it would have been better to raise the 2 piers surrounding the corner pier, including the one in the patio, but Daniel said that wasn't necessary.
When the piers on the side were raised about 1/2 inch, the old patio cover, in front of the sliding door and attached to the fascia board on the house (and nothing more), and long looking like it was about to fall over anyway, started creaking ominously.
Daniel said, "Well, we could go further, but we can't be responsible for the patio cover falling over." I agreed we should stop right there.
Luckily, that turned out to be good enough to keep the patio door from opening by itself.
Daniel and his crew started packing up to leave. "Aren't you going to do measurements inside the house." Daniel said that wasn't necessary. "We already have the elevations," he said. I presumed he had measured elevations on the outside piers (but later found out, that was not the case). Thus, the elevations recorded were only done before the 2025 foundation work was done, and not after the northwest corner was raised 1/2 inch. This issue would come back to haunt me later.
Sadly I was then told by the company Baird had hired to do a static pressure told me I needed to repair the house drain. The Baird consulting engineer said that was the most important thing I could do to protect my house from further foundation damage. He was unconcerned about the then growing holes in the backfill caused by erosion where the 2022 foundation piers had been installed (which I took great effort to fix in January 2026). He said the piers were so deep that superficial stuff like that made no difference.
Gem plumbing, who had been selected by Baird, wanted to do the drain repair, but I decided to call my usual plumber, Primo Plumbing, instead. Primo said they did not do drain work, but recommended their friends at Chambliss. (Chambliss had replaced my master bath tub and toilet in 2015, and I thought very highly of them despite having issues with that particular pressure driven toilet, but after 2020 they started telling me I was "not in their area" anymore. I was deeply hurt by that, and looking for another company, settled on Primo Plumbing.). I was worried that Chambliss would refuse.
But now, Chambliss did not refuse and sent out their own team to repeat the static pressure test. They then did a pinpoint leak test to determine where the leakage was. They determined the leakage was from a point 5 feet inside my house, and they estimated $4000 to fix it. I gave them the go ahead.
But after they fixed the leak 5 feet inside my house, they found the drain was still not holding static pressure. They then proceeded to do a camera test and a pinpoint leak test. They determined that the leak was an additional 14 feet inside my house. The plumber asked if I wanted to do that also, and I told him I had often noticed issues around there (warping in the floor) and gave him the go ahead to that. For a total of 19 feet of drain work inside my house, it would cost a total of $15,900 to fix. I was beginning to feel pain at all this, but I gave the go ahead anyway.
The drain work was a huge undertaking which required over a month to complete. First excavators dug an very long and fairly deep hole under the middle of my house. Then, the plumber came back and replaced all the drains and fittings underneath the house to the plumbing fixtures out to the determined breakage point at 19 feet. Then they did another static pressure test, finding it was now holding water. They went back on another day under the house with a video camera in order to show how it was done and obtain the required city permit. Then the excavation crew returned and spent a day backfilling the hole under my house (which had filled a good portion of my large front lawn). Since they never put as much soil back as they dug out, I asked that they put the remainder around the (eroding) foundations of my house and the Brick Pool House, which they did for an extra $150. They had also swiped some of the soil the day they did the original excavations, so I lost some soil in the process.
But during the day of the backfilling, not noises inside the house were horrible. I endless heard rocks hitting something (the new drain I suspected mostly) as it was being backfilled. I had a meeting to go to but locked my two cats inside during the rest of the process so they didn't fall into the hole. (They never forgave me for that, and after that spent much more time outside than inside after that day.)
I began to worry that the backfilling process might have damaged the drain all over again. I called Chambliss and they said they never did a static pressure test AFTER the backfilling. I called Primo and they said they would do a static pressure test at all (even though it only requires removing a toilet inside the house, and running an inflatable balloon in through the cleanout) because they don't do drain work. I felt exhausted by all the work and money I had spent (now totaling over $30,000 for the drain work and foundation piers) and left it at that. (Now I think I want to get another drain plumber to do another static pressure test. But I strongly believe this drain issue is overrated. I think it's mainly used as an excuse to void foundation warranty coverage. It's convenient because drain repair is so expensive probably few people go through with it.)
So what started as just a minor tweak to fix the self-opening sliding door had now become a vast $30,000 expense requiring a large sum of cash, withdrawals from my pension fund, and loans with payments totaling $525/month which the credit union told me had maxed out my ability to make more personal loans.
I was starting to kick myself for having gone down this path, rather than simply ignoring what were actually very minor issues in 2025.
And then, by around November of 2025, I noticed the sliding glass door, when opened about 4 inches, opening itself again. The problem was coming back.
By around May of 2025, the self opening door was just as bad as it had been before the foundation repairs.
After the 2025 foundation work in March of 2025, I took a picture of my laser level on the left side of the kitchen shining onto the wall (and far side jamb of the sliding glass door) for later reference. I took another photo in May of 2026, compared the two photos, and it is clear that the 1/2 inch last minute adjustment of the northwest corner was completely gone. It was back to where it had been before the foundation work of 2025. So whatever benefit the work had on that issue, it was now entirely gone. The northwest corner had settled back to more or less where it was before the 2025 foundation work.
This was not entirely unexpected. In fact I feared and dreaded it. After the work in 2025 I did what I had not done in 2022 and demanded that Baird send me the documents for both the work done in 2022 and the work done in 2025. So I would have a permanent record. You are supposed to have these documents if you ever need to sell the house.
One thing stood out from the documents like a sore thumb. Most of the piers around my house were at depths of 25-35 feet. But piers 1-5 surrounding the northwest corner were only 10-13 feet deep. The actual corner pier was #3 at 13 feet. Those were the piers done by Daniel and his assistant, whereas the deeper piers in the front were done by two other workers, and an entirely different crew had worked on my house in 2022.
I was worried those shallow piers from the very moment I saw this document, but decided I would not ask any questions about it unless there appeared to be actual problems with it. And now there was an actual problem. The small bit of rise added in 2025 had simply evaporated, as evidenced by my laser level.
In May of 2026 I emailed the principal at Baird Foundation Repair that I had emailed in 2025 to get the documents with my concerns. I told her that the last minute leveling had disappeared. And I worried about the 5 shallow piers in the back. I got no response. I then sent a letter, and got no response. Finally I made a call to Baird and was told I could have get warranty repair, but would likely have to wait until August. I told them I needed the work done as soon as possible because I needed to get my roof replaced, and I wanted the foundation fixed first.
I got a text from Baird indicating Randy had been scheduled for a visit on July 27 at 1:30 PM, then more than two months into the future, to address my warranty concerns.
Then the principal of Baird emailed me back that I had never sent documentation showing that my house had passed a static pressure test after the required drain work had been completed. I went through all my computer files and could not find that I had ever received such a document. So I called Chambliss Plumbing and they sent me one. I downloaded it and forwarded it to Baird. This took a month because in the meantime I got sick with a very bad Flu, then Pneumonia and got so sick I had to go to Emergency and ultimately spent 3 days in the hospital. I only got around to sending the document to Baird in early July of 2026 when I regained my health and could stand to think about it.
A few days later, the principal of Baird said they had reviewed my documents and determined my Foundation Warranty was in effect. If I had not spent that $15,900 on drain repairs, I would apparently have no foundation warranty at all. The point at which the drain was repaired is over 20 feet from the northwest corner of the house where unwanted settling had occurred. I have only ever seen issues within a few feet of where the drain was repaired, some small warping of the vinyl plank floor there, but no effect even on the walls right around it.
Now more than ever I was concerned that I had not gotten Baird to repeat the indoor measurements done after the repairs done in 2025 which had included a half inch raise of the corner. I worked up what I would say to Randy to describe what had been done. I reworked how I would present my case to Randy over several days.
But on Monday morning of July 27 I got a text not from Randy but from Daniel, saying he was coming out at 1:30. I was partly relieved I would not have to explain everything to Daniel, because he had been there. On the other hand, more than ever, I didn't trust Daniel because he had been responsible for the 5 shallow piers installed in 2025, and was in charge of the crew that did not do measurements after the work was done in 2025, unlike in 2022.
Daniel then texted he wanted to come early, but I was tied up with a roofing estimate and told him so. Later, when the roofing estimator was gone, I texted Daniel saying he could come out. He actually did come out around 11:30.
Daniel did measurements all around the house, noting that everything was about the same as the last recorded values. I explained that he had not done measurements after raising the northwest corner, but he found that the northwest corner had fallen about 1/2 inch anyway and agreed that work would be done. I said I needed the work as soon as possible. He said he would try to schedule it in two weeks.
I showed him the recorded pier depths and asked if that was a clerical mistake. He said no, those were the actual depth values. I asked them if it wasn't wrong that the five piers around the corner of the house were so much shallower than all the others. He shrugged that off, saying it was "normal."
Daniel took great interest in small bits of erosion around my house and said I needed to watch those. Actually there has not been any visible erosion around the northwest corner, only a small bit on the west side now.
In 2025, the Baird hired "Engineer" simply walked around the house once on the day of repairs, taking a couple minutes to do so, and said he trusted Daniel and his crew to do the right thing.
There were some small holes around the southern and western sides of the house, but he said I didn't much have to worry about those because the piers were very deep.
Despite that, in January 2026 I took great interest in filling all the newly formed holes in the soft backfill on the southwestern and southern sides of my house where the 2022 work had been done and putting a long row of pavers to deflect the water falling off the roof away from the house. It has done a pretty good job, though I've sometimes needed to adjust the pavers slightly and fill some small holes resulting from rainwater not being fully deflected away from the house. After my bad experiences with gutters in the front side of the house, where there are no leafy trees, I don't want to mess with gutters on the back side, and besides there is no sensible place to route a gutter downspout to. The pavers simply deflect all the water across the front edge of the lawn there, distributing the water evenly across the back.
My Thinking
I asked Google if it was normal for adjacent piers used in foundation leveling to differ in depth by 20 feet. Google replied that it was not normal, and could indicate that the shallow piers had not been driven into the ground sufficiently to hit load bearing strata, though it did sometimes happen because of unusual geology underground, like sinkhoses. Normally it would happen on a steeply sloped lot where the shallower piers were on the low side of the slope, possibly because underground load bearing strata is even more steeply sloped. Or in the case of an underground sinkhole, there would be a small number of deeper piers surrounded by the shallower piers.
About the piers not being sufficiently driven into the ground, Google linked to a Houston engineering company that checks out this situation, among others. But I have not seen information about a San Antonio company doing this.
These are the exact opposite of my situation. I am on a lot with a very low slope, and the shallow piers are on the higher side of the lot, and most of the piers are deep, with the only exception of the piers #1-5 done in 2025 by Daniel.
I think the most reasonable explanation is that Daniel did not drive the shallower piers sufficiently hard into the ground. But nobody at Baird seems to want to take responsibility for this. I sent an email and letter to the principle of Baird and she has never responded to this issue. I spoke to the foreman Daniel who had himself been responsible for the shallow piers, and he dismissed this situation as normal. His idea about the repair I requested was simply to re-adjust the 3 pier towards the west of the north side, including the corner. He said that after that adjustment, there would probably be some settling again. Yeah, right.
I don't think those 5 piers were driven into the ground sufficiently to reach the true load bearing strata. They should have the same depth, if not slightly more, as all the other piers.
I think this was because Daniel himself didn't do the work correctly.
I think it may have been partly because he was freaked out by the nearly falling over patio cover, so he was doing things very gingerly, but he has never said that.
In 2026 I replaced the patio cover with a freestanding one supported by it by footings 3 feet into the ground. (Daniel was impressed.) I was hoping that instead of sending Daniel out to do in-house measurements they would actaully send a new crew to check as well as adjust the corner pier and the piers surrounding it. So I had prepared for the work to be properly done this time if not last. But no work was done. Instead, they sent Daniel out just to see if work actually needed to be done, rather than just taking my word for it.
Or, possibly, the soil on the northeast side of the house is simply harder than the soil around other parts of the house. Perhaps any other foundation worker would have run into that same problem, it might not be Daniel's individual fault at all.
It might be, and probably is, because the approach of hydraulic ramming "piers" (which are just pipes, really) into the ground to the load bearing strata simply doesn't work when the ground is so hard it's near impossible just to ram piers sufficiently hardly into the ground.
They say they use the "weight of the house" to do that but it often isn't just the weight of the whole house, it is the weight of the house near the specific pier that is being rammed. It's around 10 tons at most, not 100 tons.
In cases where the soil is very hard, they should probably drill through the soil rather than just trying to ram a pipe down into it.
And in fact there are such approaches often used in commercial construction. Holes are often dug first with hole boring equipment, or screw type piers are screwed into the ground rather than just being pounded into it.
Household foundation repair, achieved simply by ramming jacks under the house, is likely sometimes not the correct approach. And yet that is what household "foundation repair" companies like Baird do.
If I am correct, that the shallow piers were not driven deeply enough into the soil, it would probably not be wise to have Baird simply come back to "adjust" them. They would simply settle back to the current position, or even worse if the additional digging causes additional weakness in the soil. Basically, both the foundation footing AND the piers are just floating in soil, as they were before the foundation "repair" was done. It has not really been repaired at all. If anything, it has been made more vulnerable, and additional work would make it even more vulnerable.
I don't trust Baird anymore. And I don't think anyone should trust residential "foundation repair" companies or their rubber stamp "Engineers" until they fully address these issues.
Probably it would be good to drill small holes into the soil to determine precisely where the load bearing layers actually are.
I was also unimpressed by the thin gauge of the pipes used in the piers in 2025. They were so light that Daniel's assistant was often carrying 5 or more of them, each about 2 feet long at one time. These are the pipes that are supposed to be supporting my house.
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