Foundation Repair in Olmos Park, TX

Olmos Park sits at about 807 feet, below the Balcones Escarpment, which means homes here rest on the deep expansive clay that underlies much of central San Antonio rather than the shallow limestone of the Hill Country to the north. That clay swells when it rains and shrinks hard in drought, and a foundation riding on it moves with every cycle. In a city where many houses date to the 1920s and 1930s, that movement has had a hundred years to accumulate.

Three local factors make it worse. First, age. Original pier and beam foundations here were built with shallow footings, and some still carry their original wood posts and beams. Decades of moisture cycles crush shims, rot sills, and let floors sag along the beam lines. Second, the trees. The live oaks that make Olmos Park famous also pull enormous amounts of water out of the clay in dry summers, so the soil under one side of a foundation can shrink faster than the other and drop a wall out of level. Third, old plumbing. Cast iron drain lines from the original construction era corrode and leak under homes, soaking the clay beneath a foundation and creating the heaved, uneven floors we are often called to diagnose.

Add the runoff that moves through the neighborhood toward Olmos Creek and the wooded Olmos Basin on the city's edge, and you get the classic Olmos Park pattern: a stately older home with sloping floors, plaster cracks, and doors that no longer sit square in their frames.