Fayetteville Foundation Co. serves Northwest Arkansas, working two mechanisms: soil piping down into Ozark karst, which removes support permanently, and clay pockets that cycle with moisture. Every free evaluation produces floor elevation readings before any scope is written.
How we scope a foundation repair
Measurement first, then a recommendation, then a price — in that order, every time. Floor elevation readings across the whole footprint reported in inches, crack documentation with photographs and dates, and a walk of the exterior water path before anyone talks about piers. Where the numbers read flat, the report says correct two downspouts and monitor. A company that never declines the larger sale is not measuring anything.
Why we start outside
On karst, water is not a moisture issue — it is the excavation mechanism. Concentrated infiltration is what carries soil into the rock, so a downspout at a corner, a patio funneling runoff to one point, a trench backfilled loose, or upslope runoff crossing the lot are causes rather than side notes. Twenty minutes outside regularly saves a customer five figures inside.
The two numbers we refuse to make up
Pier depth and void volume. The limestone surface here is pinnacled, so depth is discovered during the drive, and nobody knows how much empty space is under a slab until it is probed. Rather than pretend, we put an assumption and a rate in writing for both — a stated depth with a per-foot rate beyond it, and a void-filling rate with the measurement method named. Then a surprise is arithmetic you already agreed to instead of a conversation held with equipment in your yard.
What the survey protects you from
Foundation repair is a market with a wide honesty spread, because the customer usually cannot evaluate the diagnosis. The elevation survey fixes that: it is a number you can hold, take to another company, and use to compare bids that would otherwise be incomparable. We hand it over whether or not you hire us, including when the numbers say you do not need us.
What a foundation repair costs to run, honestly
We are a service-area business. There is no showroom, no yard full of idle equipment, and no commissioned sales force whose pay depends on converting an evaluation into piers. That structure is why we can afford to write a $2,000 drainage scope for a house another company would quote at $14,000, and it is worth understanding when you compare bids. A company with high fixed overhead needs a certain average ticket, and that pressure eventually reaches the diagnosis.
Who we call when it is not our job
Three situations get referred out rather than sold. A contested diagnosis, a purchase dispute, or any repair needing a stamp gets an independent licensed structural engineer — not one we retain, because the point is that the only client is you. A suspected slab leak gets a plumber for an isolation test before we quote structure, since a leak found first can change both the scope and whether insurance participates. And a house with an active builder warranty gets pointed at the warranty first, with our documentation, before it gets pointed at our invoice.
What we won’t recommend
- Piers before a survey. A pier count with no elevation numbers behind it is a price, not a design.
- A firm void-filling total before probing. Nobody can price a space they have not measured.
- Foam injection as house underpinning. Polyurethane is for flatwork; structural loads need engineered piers.
- Sealing a crack that is still moving. It buys a neat line that reopens, and it destroys the record of whether the crack was moving at all.
- Structural work while water is still concentrating. The water that carried soil away will do it again around a new pier.
Get a free Fayetteville foundation evaluation
Tell us what the house is doing — a crack that keeps growing, a door that quit latching, a floor that dips toward one corner — and we’ll schedule an evaluation with floor elevation readings and photos. We reply the same business day.