How to judge a foundation contractor in Texas

What this site is

This site connects San Angelo homeowners with local foundation specialists and gets you a free evaluation and a written price. We are not going to tell you about a fleet of trucks or a founding date, because the useful thing we can offer is different: a straight explanation of what is happening under houses in this county, and a way to get the house measured without paying to find out.

That covers San Angelo itself and the Tom Green County towns around it, where the same clay sits under houses built very differently from one decade to the next. The neighborhoods and Tom Green County towns covered, one by one →

Texas licenses nobody for this work

This is the fact that should change how you shop. Texas has no state foundation repair contractor license. A company describing itself as licensed is not making a claim you can verify, because there is no register to check it against. That does not make the trade lawless — building codes and city permits still apply — but it does mean the burden of checking falls on you.

The four questions that are actually checkable

• A written scope. The number and type of piers and the location of each one. "We will level the house" is not a scope, and two quotes without this cannot be compared.
• Insurance, confirmed at the source. Ask for the insurer's details and confirm the policy with them rather than accepting a photocopy.
• An engineer. The Texas Board of Professional Engineers points to the Texas Section ASCE Guidelines for the Evaluation and Repair of Residential Foundations, Version 3, adopted March 2022. Ask whether a licensed professional engineer is evaluating the house and will stamp a report. In a trade with no license, this is often the only real credential available.
• The warranty in writing. What it covers, what voids it, and whether it transfers to the next owner. A verbal lifetime warranty is worth nothing at closing.

Know which level of investigation you are buying

The ASCE Texas Section guidelines define three, and knowing the difference is how you tell two similar-looking quotes apart:

• Level A — interviews, document review, visual observation, and a written report of observations, conclusions and recommendations.
• Level B — everything in A, plus measured relative foundation elevations, a scaled drawing allowing for floor covering variations, and calculated deflection and tilt against tolerances.
• Level C — everything above, plus site-specific soil sampling and testing, plumbing testing, reinforcing and post-tension assessment, tree survey and a detailed distress survey.

A quote built on a Level A walk-through and one built on Level B measurements are different products at the same name. Ask which you are getting. Get a free evaluation with the floors measured and the price in writing →

Permits

The City of San Angelo requires a permit to construct, alter, repair, enlarge, move or demolish a structure. Foundation underpinning is structural work. Residential plan review runs 10 to 15 business days. Ask in writing who is pulling the permit and whose name is on it, and if you are told none is needed, confirm that yourself with the city's Building Permits and Inspections office before agreeing to anything.

What you can do this weekend for free

Two things genuinely help, and neither needs a contractor. Walk the outside during the next rain and watch where the water actually goes — a downspout releasing at the corner of the slab is one of the most common and cheapest-to-fix causes of localized movement. And through the dry months, run a soaker hose 12 to 18 inches out from the slab, in short runs several times a week rather than one long flood, so the clay never dries out far enough to pull away. The Texas A&M Forest Service screwdriver test tells you when: if a screwdriver will not push easily six to eight inches into the soil, water it.

Ground and climate facts on this page come from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Official Soil Series Descriptions for the Tobosa, Lipan and Angelo series (all three mapped in Tom Green County) and from NOAA climate normals for San Angelo. Investigation levels and engineering references are from the Texas Section ASCE Guidelines for the Evaluation and Repair of Residential Foundations, Version 3.