You’ve been looking around at various foundation repair companies and their services. You’re *this close* to choosing Anchor Foundation Repair for your pier and beam foundation project. You want to know a bit more about our house leveling warranty and its terms.
At Anchor Foundation Repair, we stake our 35+ year reputation in the Brazos Valley community on the quality of our services and workmanship and stand behind our repairs with a warranty. We sure can tell you all about our house leveling warranty in plain language and leave out the legal-ese.
This article will describe the warranty terms for our house leveling/pier and beam foundation repair services. We will spell out the timelines and any service costs as well as explain a bit about why we do things the way we do.
What is Anchor’s House Leveling Warranty?
You can call it house leveling or pier and beam foundation repairs or crawl space home repairs — it’s all about the same to us. But this is just the warranty for elevated homes with a crawl space under them (we have a different warranty policy for slab foundations).
The warranty and service agreement for house leveling is a fairly simple two-part deal. In the first year after the completed repairs, there is no charge for any needed adjustments. In years 2 through 3, any adjustments needed will be charged at $175 per crew hour.
There’s no major production to getting an adjustment during the warranty period, just contact us by phone or through our online contact form. There’s a spot where you can check off that you are needing warranty work.
After the third year, the warranty period ends and any new work needed will be considered a new job. Here’s all the info again in a nice neat little list:
- Year One: no charge for any adjustments
- Year Two and Three: $175 per full crew hour for needed adjustments
- After Year Three: new project pricing
We keep historical records of our repair addresses and can look you up when we get a warranty request. Warranties are transferrable to the new owner even if you sell your home within that 3 year period.
Why Is the Pier and Beam Repair Warranty Different Than Slab?
For our slab foundation repairs, we have a different warranty that is more robust with lifetime service agreement terms. You might wonder why we can’t do a lifetime warranty for pier and beam homes like we do with slabs. Good question.
Warranty for Slab Foundation Repairs
For slab homes, we use drilled piers that penetrate up to ~12 feet into the ground. These poured concrete piers are specifically designed to resist uplift from the expansive clay soils that we have in this area. Drilled bell-bottom piers also provide a wide base of stability due to the way they are shaped and made.
None of this stuff is done for a typical house leveling project or pier and beam repair.
Warranty for Pier and Beam/House Leveling Foundation Repairs
The usual crawl space type of foundation repair is very surface-oriented. We are working on the sill beams and other wood under your home. We are also working with pier structures that rest on the surface of the ground or only penetrate the ground a few inches.
Pier and beam and block and base foundations essentially rest on the surface of the ground. By nature, this home type is not going to be as stable. So we really can’t guarantee for very long that your house won’t experience movement and foundation settlement again, unfortunately.
Instead, we have the 3-year plan outlined earlier and also recommend a regular maintenance plan for your crawl space home. We will discuss this more in the next section.
Anything Else I Can Do Make Pier and Beam Repairs Last?
We recommend that homeowners do two things to add longevity to pier and beam or crawl space home foundation repairs: deal with drainage and plan for maintenance.
Dealing with Drainage
The number one recurring cause of pier and beam foundation problems is poor drainage and excess moisture under the home and its impact on expansive soil and wood materials. Attending to drainage issues/keeping your foundation dry after repairs can go a long way to keeping your home and its newly repaired foundation stable longer.
Your crawl space home was likely repaired when it was not rainy and wet and everything was snug and shimmed up in these dry conditions. Maintaining the same dryness level over time will help ensure that your home is not as susceptible to the expansion and contraction of clay soils.
Maintaining a consistent level of relative dryness under the home will give you the best chance at stability. Poor drainage can wreck all that pretty quick.
The annual Central Texas climate of rain and wet weather cycling to more arid or even drought conditions can make it hard for shallow and crawl space foundations to stay put. The best course of action is to keep things as dry as possible after repairs to maintain consistency in the moisture levels and avoid extreme changes.
We’ve got a great article that covers how to deal with drainage issues to keep things as dry as possible and what to handle first.
Planning for Regular Maintenance
Crawl space homes are going to move eventually, even after you do repairs. Planned regular maintenance for pier and beam homes is a lot like getting the oil changed in your car. Sure, it costs money every so often, but you get a lot more miles out of your car (or foundation repairs) when you plan for this maintenance.
Planning and paying for foundation maintenance visits is less expensive than allowing your crawl space home to fall into disrepair again after decades of neglect.
Periodic maintenance every 5 to 8 years would include some basic overall reshimming, adjustments, and securing your home’s position in places where it has become loose or slightly unlevel.
We even have some homeowners that love their home so much that they have us come out annually for a check-up! We certainly don’t have to come out every year, but it’s a good idea to plan for future maintenance rather than forgetting about it until extensive damage takes hold.
Ready To Get Your House Leveled Now?
Now that you know all about our pier and beam foundation repair warranty, do you feel comfortable getting started with the repair process? The first step to getting things going is to get a bid by way of an In-Home Assessment visit.
At Anchor Foundation Repair, we have been inspecting and repairing crawl space homes in the Bryan, College Station, and other Brazos Valley communities like Navasota and Caldwell since 1985. We’re not here to convince you that you need foundation repair, but we’re standing by *ready to help* the moment you feel *ready to fix* your foundation issues.
Get started the fastest by reaching out to Anchor with our online contact form here to begin the assessment and quoting process today.