Foundation raising in Saratoga CA - a house held steady or lifted back near level

Usually you notice it before you know what it is. A door that used to close now sticks, a crack runs up from the corner of a window, or a marble rolls across the kitchen floor. Those signs mean part of the house has dropped, and the price of fixing it turns on how far it's dropped, whether we hold it or lift it, how many supports it takes, how easy the foundation is to reach and what the ground underneath is like. The schedule depends less on our days at the house than on the city's side, meaning whether your job needs plans, a soil report and a permit, so we check early what the city wants for your job. You get your own figure at the estimate visit, after I've seen the house.

I start by walking the house with you, looking at the cracks, the doors that stick and how far the floors are out, because the first decision is whether your house needs to be held where it is or lifted back up. Holding it stops the settling and usually costs less. Lifting it closes gaps and brings floors back toward level, but it can open up finishes that have already cracked, so I'll tell you which one I'd pick for your house and why. Then I explain the methods in plain terms, how the supports go in, where they go and what we'd have to dig out or cut through to reach them. We also look at where the water from the roof and yard runs, since water soaking the soil next to the foundation is usually part of why it moved. I'm upfront about which parts our own crew handles and who handles the rest, like engineering or repairs to the house itself, so you're not finding a gap halfway through. Once the supports are set, we backfill, pack the soil back down and clean up.

Getting to the foundation often means going through concrete, so we use concrete cutting to saw clean openings in a patio, walkway or garage slab instead of breaking out more than we need. If the settling has cracked or tipped your driveway too, we can pour a new concrete driveway once the house is steady, so it isn't set against a foundation that's still moving.

The city wants a soil report, an engineer's write-up of what the ground is like, for new buildings, second floor and basement additions, and any project with an unconventional foundation design, and that report has to be ready when your plans go in. A lift isn't always one of those, so it's worth asking early whether your foundation plan counts. If your project falls below the city's listed thresholds, the city asks you to reach out to its Planner of the Day, who helps decide whether plans can go straight to the Building Division. Permits for Saratoga homes are applied for online through the city's permitting system, which also shows where your application stands. When a permit applies, we handle the contractor's side of it and help you with the parts that fall to you as the owner.

Ground is the other half of it here. The city requires geotechnical clearance for new structures, basements and additions in areas with geologic hazards, like hillsides that can slide and land close to creeks, and a past city report noted that many homes in those areas were built before Saratoga became a city, with most falling short of today's building and seismic code. That's a pattern, not a verdict on your house, but it's why I look hard at slope, drainage and what the house sits on before saying hold or lift. We're based in Saratoga and work across it and the cities around it, and we see the same hillside lots and older foundations on jobs in Los Gatos and Cupertino.