Maybe you watched your neighbor’s foundation being repaired, or you’re worried about how this is going to work for your own home. Will it look like a scene from a sci-fi movie—jacks everywhere, concrete trucks, and a house slowly elevating? You might be thinking, “Are they going to lift the whole house at once? Isn’t that risky?”
At Anchor Foundation Repair, we’ve raised thousands of slab homes across the Brazos Valley, so we understand why it might be confusing. The reality is that lifting a house is a careful, controlled process, not a “jack everything at once and hope for the best” situation.
In this article, we’ll walk you through our process of slab raising using drilled bell-bottom piers, and explain why we lift portions of the home individually. We’re happy to help you see why we do things the way we do, and why it’s safer for your home in the long run.
Drilled Bell-Bottom Pier Foundation Repair Process
Before any lifting can happen, your foundation needs a solid support system. Think of drilled bell-bottom piers as the “legs” that hold your house steady while we make adjustments. Without them, lifting the slab could be risky and might even cause more damage than it fixes.
The purpose of the bell-shaped pier is to maximize long term stability and strength. These piers are designed to reach down to stable soil and provide a strong, reliable base for your home to rest on for years to come.
Here’s how our slab foundation repair process works, step by step:
- Dig Under Slab Beam – We start by digging a hole to reach beneath the perimeter beam of the foundation. This square hole will also form the cap of each drilled pier.
- Drill the Shaft – At the bottom of the hole, we begin to drill an 8” shaft to reach down 10 to 12 feet below floor height.
- Form the Bell – At the bottom of the shaft, we create a bell-shaped base using a specialized drill attachment. This wider bottom spreads the weight of your home over a larger area, giving the pier extra stability and resistance to both uplift and settlement.
- Pour the Concrete – Once the bell is formed, we pour concrete into the steel-reinforced shaft from the bottom up to the pier cap. As it cures, it creates a strong one-piece pier that can safely support the foundation during the raising process.
- Allow It to Cure – The concrete needs time to harden and reach full strength. This step ensures that when the lifting begins, your home is resting on a strong, durable base.
- Raise and Secure – The home gets gradually raised with bottle jacks positioned at the pier points around the foundation. The raised position is secured with steel shims.
- Mud Pump and Clean Up – To fill the void now present under the raised home, mud pumping is used to fully secure the home at its restored position. Clean up includes returning your personal items to their original location and powerwashing your driveway.
By following these steps, we make sure your foundation has the support it needs to lift safely and rest evenly. The drilled bell-bottom pier is reliable, time-tested, and crucial for our long-lasting repair and lifetime warranty.
Why Not Raise All Slab Jacks Simultaneously?
It might seem like lifting the entire house at once would make more sense, but that’s not how it works in practice. Imagine trying to lift one side of a heavy table while everyone else pulls randomly on the other sides . . . too many counter forces and unpredictability. The same principle applies to your foundation.
We lift sections one at a time because:
- Controlled Lifting: Each section is monitored as it rises, so we can make sure it’s moving evenly and not causing damage to inside and outside finishes. It’s better to go slow than over-lift.
- Avoiding Uneven Pressure: Raising all jacks at once could create uneven stress on the foundation, risking sudden shifts, uncontrolled pressure, or snag points.
- Precision Adjustments: Working in stages lets us fine-tune the lift as we go, keeping your home’s structural integrity and stability in mind throughout the process.
- Cost-Effective: Lifting an average home with 15–20 jacks at once would require a huge crew, which is neither practical nor affordable. Staged lifting keeps the job efficient for us and cost-friendly for you.
By lifting carefully and in stages, we keep your foundation and your home safe.
Is It Okay to Raise Foundation Jacks at Different Times?
Absolutely, it’s totally okay to raise foundation jacks at different times. In fact, it’s the best way to do it. Lifting in stages allows us to respond to how the foundation reacts:
- If a section is lifting too slowly or unevenly, we can pause and adjust.
- It prevents sudden shifts that could damage floors, walls, or the structure itself.
- It won’t hurt your home at all when done properly.
This is not a “snatch and grab” process where you just lift at full force to get it done fast. It’s a slow negotiation with your home, and we are monitoring the situation at all times. Doing it gradually ensures everything gets lifted evenly and safely.
Surprisingly, slab-on-grade foundations have a bit of flexibility to them and are built to be resilient under pressure. Even though they are made of steel and concrete, they can bend some, and it takes a lot of force to break them. Our jacks are powerful, but they aren’t going to easily snap a foundation if one part of your home is a little higher than another for a short time.
The forces of expansive clay soil that cause damage to foundations are far more powerful than any minor stress we might inflict on a home during the raising process. Also consider that your foundation didn’t sink all at once–it settled gradually, a little here and a little there over time. We raise it back up in the same slow way.
How Do Other Foundation Repair Companies Raise Homes?
Most other companies don’t use drilled bell-bottom piers; they typically use some variation of concrete pressed pilings in this area or perhaps steel helical piers. Even though we use different methods of slab repair, the way all companies perform the raising part of the process is similar – slowly and in sections.
The size of a typical foundation repair crew is another indicator to support this. Realistically, you would need a whole lot of guys to lift all jack points simultaneously (remember when I said an average job has 15 – 20 jack points). I’ve never seen any massive foundation repair crews like that ever. Most are probably like 6 guys maximum.
By lifting one section at a time, the raising process is controlled from start to finish no matter what company you decide on. The important thing is making sure your home is raised with care and your investment is protected during lifting.
While other companies may have their own methods and techniques, we rely on our drilled bell-bottom pier process because it works. Our experience with thousands of homes in the Brazos Valley has shown that staged lifting is safe, reduces the risk of damage, and efficiently delivers long-lasting results.
How Long Does the Foundation Repair Process Take?
Understanding how slab raising happens and why takes some of the mystery out of this part of the process and shows why patience and precision are key. By lifting slowly and evenly, monitoring every movement, and using drilled bell-bottom piers, we ensure your foundation repair is safe when it’s in progress and effective for a lifetime.
At Anchor Foundation Repair, we’ve perfected our procedures over the past 40+ years here in the Brazos Valley. We have very experienced team members who have been with us for decades and a training process that ensures things are done with care.
Now that you understand how home raising works, you might want to know how long the whole repair really takes (for us, it’s 3 to 4 weeks, but we’re not there the whole time because of concrete curing time). If you’re curious about the timing details of it all, check out our article on how long our foundation repairs take to see what you can expect from each stage and start to finish.
