An under-slab leak feeds water into the clay continuously, 24 hours a day. Clay that stays wet swells — and swelling soil can heave a slab upward with enough force to undo any repair, piered or not. No pier system on the market can hold a foundation still while the ground beneath it is being actively inflated. This condition protects the repair from the one force stronger than it.

Watch for the classic leak signals: an unexplained jump in your water bill, warm spots on the floor, the sound of running water with everything off, or soil beside the house that never dries. If you suspect a leak, have a plumber run a hydrostatic test promptly and keep the repair receipt with your warranty papers — it documents that you held up your end.

A roof concentrates thousands of gallons of rain a year into a few drip lines. Without gutters, all of that water lands in a narrow trench right beside your grade beam — exactly where it does the most damage. One corner of the soil gets soaked and heaves while the rest stays dry and settles. The six-foot rule moves that water past the zone where it can reach the clay under your slab.

Install gutters with downspout extensions or splash blocks before the first rain after your repair, then clean them every fall. A clogged gutter overflows at the corners — the same corners that settle first. Five minutes on a ladder twice a year protects a five-figure repair.

This is the heart of the whole document. Your piers bear on stable strata that doesn't care about the weather — but the soil between and around the piers still shrinks in drought and swells after storms. Keeping moisture consistent (not wet, not bone-dry — steady) is what keeps the un-piered portions of your foundation from developing new movement that the warranty, by design, cannot cover.

In long dry spells, run soaker hoses around the perimeter — about 18 inches out from the slab, in the early morning, enough to keep the soil from cracking open. Grade flowerbeds so water drains away from the house, never toward it. Avoid heavy new irrigation against one wall only; uneven watering is as harmful as uneven drought.

Your pier plan was engineered for the weight and load paths of your house as it stood on repair day. An addition, a second story, or a removed load-bearing wall changes where the weight goes — and can overload piers that were correctly sized for the original structure. The written-approval step isn't bureaucracy; it lets us re-check the math (and sometimes add support) before the new load causes movement, instead of after.

Planning a remodel? Call us first — the review costs you a phone call. We will tell you in writing whether the change affects the pier plan, and your warranty continues uninterrupted.

A warranty is a promise about workmanship — the piers we installed, bearing where we proved they bear. The events in this list are forces acting on your property from outside that work: catastrophes no contractor controls, water conditions the maintenance terms above exist to prevent, and third-party work we never saw. Listing them plainly here is what lets us promise the rest for a lifetime. Note that tree roots are on this list: a mature tree within root-reach can out-drink the soil beside your slab in a drought.

For large trees within about 20 feet of the slab, ask us about root barriers and deep watering during drought — often a few hundred dollars of prevention against thousands in new movement. After any flood or extreme event, walk your perimeter and photograph anything new; early documentation makes every later conversation easier.

Foundation movement is progressive: a quarter-inch caught early is a simple re-adjustment; the same movement ignored for a year can rack door frames, crack brick, and strain plumbing. The 30-day window exists so problems are fixed while they are still small — which is better for your house and is the only way a no-cost adjustment stays economically possible for us to promise.

Do a five-minute walk-through each season: do the same doors still close? Any new cracks above windows? Pencil-mark and date the ends of any hairline crack — if it grows past the marks, call us that week, not next year.

Your pier plan shows exactly which sections of the foundation we supported — and clay being clay, a different, un-piered section can develop its own movement years later. That is new soil behavior, not a failure of our work, which is why coverage follows the piers, not the whole perimeter. The remedy — re-adjusting the original piers at no charge — is the thing we actually control and can promise forever. We will never blur the covered/uncovered line: it is drawn on your plan before you sign.

This clause is worth real money the day you sell. A documented, transferable foundation warranty converts a disclosure liability ("this house had foundation work") into a closing asset ("this house's foundation is warranted for life — and that follows you, free"). Buyers' inspectors and lenders respond to it. The 60-day notice keeps our records current so the new owner's first warranty call goes smoothly, with the pier map and elevation history already under their name.

Selling? Hand the buyer this document, the pier map, and the before/after elevation survey, and remind them of the 60-day window. Keep copies of everything — we keep ours too, but the homeowner's file is the one that travels with the house.

Most "is my warranty pier moving?" calls turn out to be something else — seasonal hairline cracks, a drainage issue, an un-piered section. The refundable fee keeps claim visits serious and honest in both directions: if our work moved, the visit costs you nothing and the adjustment is free; if it's something else, you still leave with a measured answer about what is actually happening, which is worth the trip charge on its own.

Cosmetics: drywall, brick, and tile are finish materials — they record movement but they are not structure, and re-finishing is a different trade. Water and roots: these are the maintenance conditions from Section 1 restated; they are the homeowner-controlled forces. Third-party work: we can only stand behind a foundation whose support system we know — another contractor's unreviewed changes break that chain. Catastrophes: no workmanship promise can absorb an earthquake or flood. Maintenance failures: the warranty assumes the partnership; this line says so explicitly.

The pattern across all five: we warrant what we built and what we control. Everything excluded is either nature, neglect, or someone else's work — and every controllable item on the list has a maintenance habit in this document that prevents it.

Lifting a settled foundation means physically moving your house back toward level — sometimes by an inch or more. Materials that bent slowly into the settled position (drywall, brick, tile, pipe) must now bend back, and brittle materials sometimes announce that with a crack or a creak. We lift in small, measured increments while re-checking elevations precisely to minimize this — but no honest contractor can promise zero finish-material response to structural correction. This clause says that plainly before the work, not after. The "written terms only" sentence protects you too: everything we've promised you is on paper, so you never depend on remembering a hallway conversation.

Before repair day, photograph existing cracks and finishes — a dated baseline helps everyone. After the lift, expect some doors to swing differently and some old cracks to close while a few new hairlines appear; give the house a couple of weeks to finish adjusting before scheduling cosmetic touch-ups.

Pier crews and equipment are scheduled in day-blocks; a blocked side yard or a car over the work line can idle a full crew. Clearing access before we arrive keeps your job on its quoted price and your repair on its promised timeline.

Public utility locating services mark city lines — they do not know about your irrigation loops, landscape lighting, or that gas line to the grill. Only you (or your installer's drawings) know where private lines run. Marking them costs an afternoon; an unmarked line found by an excavation does not.

Walk the pier plan with us at scheduling and flag anything buried near the marked pits. If you have sprinkler as-builts or photos from installation, share them — crews dig differently when they know what's below.

Open pits, hydraulic equipment under tons of load, and moving steel are genuinely dangerous in a way a backyard never normally is. You can live at home during the repair — most customers do — but the marked work zone needs the same respect as any construction site, for the days it exists.

Easements, deed restrictions, and HOA rules attach to your property and are visible only in your documents. A pier pit inside a utility easement or an HOA-regulated setback is a problem only you can clear in advance — and clearing it in advance is dramatically cheaper than relocating work later.

Due on completion is standard for residential foundation work: the job is verified finished — elevations re-checked with you — the day we leave. Card fees simply pass through the processor's actual charge rather than hiding it in everyone's price. The 20-section threshold is the honest way to price unknowable depth: your quote assumes a generous normal driving depth, and only the rare pier that must chase refusal unusually deep adds a small, published per-section cost — you pay for actual depth, not a padded worst case built into every bid. Ask us to show you the section counts on your installation log; they are recorded per pier.

This section draws the line between structure and finish. We are hired to stop and correct foundation movement — a structural outcome we measure and warrant. What we cannot warrant is how decades-old finish materials respond to that correction, defects that existed invisibly before we arrived, or the impossibility of matching 1987 brick. "Proven gross negligence" still holds us fully accountable for genuine carelessness — this clause limits liability for the inherent physics of lifting a house, not for bad work.

Budget a small cosmetic allowance alongside any foundation repair — caulk, patch, and paint after the structure stabilizes. Doing finishes after the lift (never before) means you pay for them once.

Indemnification covers third-party claims — for example, a neighbor or visitor asserting a claim connected to the project on your property. It assigns those property-side risks to the property owner, where insurance for them normally lives (your homeowner's policy). The gross-negligence exception keeps the boundary fair: if we cause harm through genuine carelessness, this clause does not shield us.

Mediation-then-arbitration is the fastest, least expensive path through a genuine disagreement: mediation resolves most disputes in a single session, and arbitration resolves the rest in months instead of the years court litigation can take. The prevailing-party fee rule cuts both ways — it discourages weak claims from either side, including ours. Most disputes in this trade are measurement questions, and your elevation records usually answer them before anyone needs this section.

"Get it in writing" — this clause makes that the rule for both of us. If anyone on our team promises you something extra, ask for it on paper and we will sign it; then it is enforceable. This protects you from depending on memory, and it means the documents in your hands are the complete, reliable record of what was agreed.