Foundation Repair services in St. Peters
Water arrives in a small number of ways and leaves in a smaller number still. The pages below are grouped by which of those a job actually addresses, because the wrong category is the usual reason a foundation repair job gets done twice.
Three questions sort almost every inquiry. Is the movement seasonal, returning each year, or is it progressive and getting worse? Is it a wall that has bowed, leaned or cracked through, or the footing under the house that has settled? And has anyone measured it, or is it being read off the width of a crack? Answer those and the right page is usually obvious — and so is the wrong one.
There are cracks in the basement, or in the walls above it
Foundation Crack Repair in St. Peters, MO
Cracks are repaired once movement has stopped. Sealing one that is still opening buys a season and removes the only thing telling you how fast the house is moving.
A basement wall bows, leans or has cracked across
Basement Wall Repair in St. Peters, MO
Basement wall repair holds a wall the soil has pushed inward: anchors tied into the yard, braces set inside, or a rebuild of the section that has failed. A damp wall that is still straight is waterproofing, a different trade.
The floors slope, or the doors have stopped closing
Foundation Piers in St. Peters, MO
Leveling a house means installing support below the soil that is moving, then raising the structure back toward its original elevation as far as it will safely go.
The floor bounces, or it smells damp under the house
Crawl Space Repair in St. Peters, MO
Crawl space repair covers three separate jobs — sealing the ground so moisture stops rising, supporting the framing so the floor stops moving, and getting water out and air through. Most houses need one of the three, not all of them.
Concrete outside has dropped or lifted
Concrete Leveling Repair in St. Peters, MO
Concrete leveling raises a sunken slab by filling the void underneath it, either with a cement slurry or with expanding foam, and the concrete itself is reused.
Water stands against the house after it rains
Foundation Drainage and Moisture Control in St. Peters, MO
Wet soil presses harder on a basement wall than dry soil, and water standing against the wall finds any crack it has, so the work is getting surface water away from the house.
Nobody has told me what is actually wrong yet
Foundation Repair Inspection in St. Peters, MO
A foundation inspection takes relative floor elevations across the whole structure and writes them down, so the shape and size of the movement is a measurement rather than a description.
It is a business, not a house
Commercial Foundation Repair in St. Peters, MO
Commercial foundation work is priced from occupancy, phasing and engineered load before it is priced from area, because the building usually has to keep operating.
I have two quotes and do not know which to take
Push Piers vs Helical Piers in St. Peters, MO
Two steel piers for the same settled footing. One is driven down with a hydraulic ram against the weight of the house, the other turned into the ground with a torque motor. It is the decision on most settled footings here, and the two are often quoted for the same house at different prices with different reasons given.
Mudjacking vs Foam Lifting in St. Peters, MO
Two ways of raising a sunken concrete slab: a cement slurry pumped underneath, or an expanding polyurethane foam injected through smaller ports. It is the choice on any flatwork that has dropped — a driveway, a patio, a garage floor — and both are offered for the same job at different prices.
When you do not need foundation repair
Two things get mistaken for foundation failure more than anything else. A hairline crack in a poured basement wall or in mortar that has been there for years and has not widened is usually a shrinkage crack from when the concrete cured, not a structural one. And a door that binds in one season and swings free in the next is following the year: clay soil swells when it takes on water and shrinks when it dries, and the house moves a little with it. Neither one is a reason to put piers under a house or anchors through a wall, and a contractor who quotes on either without measuring first is selling you the wrong job.
Two checks worth making before anyone quotes you.
- Date the crack. Mark both ends with a pencil, write the date on the wall beside it, and measure the width against something known — a dime is about a sixteenth of an inch. Look again in three months. A crack that has not moved is not an active one, and no pier will make it narrower.
- Watch one door through a season change. A door that sticks for part of the year and clears again when the season turns is tracking the weather, not a failing foundation. A door that has bound a little harder every year for two years is the one worth an inspection, and it is the pattern to describe when you call.
If both checks come back quiet, wait a season and look again before spending anything larger.
Read what a St. Peters foundation repair job costs before calling anyone, and check the St. Peters Foundation Repair Co service area to see whether your street is covered.
Back to St. Peters Foundation Repair Co.
The ground under St. Peters
The ground under the house decides the repair, not the crack you noticed first
The largest soil mapped under St. Peters is Harvester-Urban land complex, 2 to 9 percent slopes
A soil survey names and maps every soil in the county, and this is the one that covers more of St. Peters than any other. It matters because support under a house has to reach ground that does not change with the season, and how deep that ground sits is a fact about the soil rather than about the house. Ask which soil is mapped at your address. Ask what depth they expect to reach in it, and how they will know when they have reached it.
USDA NRCS Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO), via Soil Data Access
Where rain goes once it lands decides what gets checked before anything is priced
98 percent of the ground mapped in St. Peters is soil that sheds water instead of taking it in
Soil in hydrologic group C or D takes water in slowly or hardly at all, so rain on it stays near the surface and along the outside of the walls. That is why the grade and the downspouts are checked first, and why the sorting question on this page is what moved and in which direction. Ask for measurements in writing before anyone prices a repair.
USDA NRCS Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO), via Soil Data Access
Ground that is saturated has nowhere to put the next storm, and water sitting against a wall keeps working on it.
What happens after you send an address
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The address first, and only then who you are
The first screen asks for the property address and checks that a contractor covers it. Only if one does does it ask for a name, a phone number and an email — there is no point taking your details to tell you nobody serves your street.
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Your details are not for sale
It goes to a foundation repair contractor working in St. Peters. The details are never sold, and never passed to a second firm.
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No cost, and nothing attached
There is no fee for sending an address and no obligation that follows from it. Deciding the work is the wrong work is a perfectly good outcome.
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Who does the work
An independent foundation repair contractor, not the publisher of this site. Who runs this site, and where every figure on it comes from, is set out on the about page.