A 30-Day, 6-Month and 1-Year Foundation Repair Follow-Up Plan

The day the piers go in is not the finish line. What you do in the first 30 days, at six months, and at the one-year mark decides whether the repair holds and whether your paperwork protects you later. Here is a practical schedule for Central Texas homeowners.

Why a foundation repair needs a follow-up schedule at all

A repair corrects the elevation of your home, but the soil underneath it keeps doing what Central Texas soil does. On the Blackland Prairie, the Houston Black clays that dominate the east and south sides of the Balcones Escarpment carry a plasticity index commonly in the 40-60 range, which means they swell when wet and shrink when dry through an active zone that typically runs about 6 to 15 feet deep. Galvanized steel piers driven past that zone to load-bearing strata take your home out of the argument, but the yard, the drainage, and the plumbing around the house still move with the seasons.

The follow-up plan exists for two reasons. First, it lets you verify the repair with numbers rather than hope, catching any small settlement while it is still small. Second, it builds the written record you will want if you ever file a warranty claim, sell the house, or hand the coverage to a buyer. A lifetime transferable warranty is only as good as the documentation you keep behind it.

None of the steps below require special tools or expense. They mostly require a phone camera, a notebook, and the discipline to look at the same spots on a calendar instead of only when something looks wrong.

Document everything and fix the water

Your first job is to capture the baseline. When the crew leaves, you should already have the post-repair elevation survey, the written engineer-backed repair plan, the pier locations, and the signed warranty. Read them, then photograph and back them up somewhere that is not just your kitchen drawer. If any measurement or term is unclear, ask before you sign off on completion, not a year later.

The second job in this window is water. Most repeat foundation movement in Central Texas is a moisture problem in disguise, so the 30-day period is when you correct the drainage that likely contributed in the first place. Grade soil to slope away from the house, extend downspouts several feet past the foundation, and clear any low spots where water pools against the slab or beam. If your yard bakes and cracks in summer, a simple soaker-hose routine that keeps soil moisture steady around the perimeter does more good than any single dramatic fix.

Finally, expect the house to keep talking for a few weeks. Doors reseating, a hairline crack shifting slightly, or a sticking window are normal as the structure settles onto the new supports. Note them, date them, and photograph them rather than repairing them yet.

• File the post-repair elevation survey, repair plan, pier map and warranty; back up digital copies.
• Photograph every interior and exterior crack with a date and a coin or ruler for scale.
• Regrade soil to slope away from the foundation; extend downspouts past the beam.
• Start a consistent perimeter watering routine before the next dry spell.
• Keep a simple log of any doors, windows or cracks that shift as the house settles.

Plumbing, movement and the seasonal swing

By six months your home has lived through part of a wet-and-dry cycle, which is exactly when a hidden plumbing problem shows itself. Under-slab supply or drain leaks are a common cause of localized clay heave, and they can quietly undo good pier work. This is the point to schedule a static plumbing test, sometimes called a hydrostatic test, through a licensed plumber. It is cheap insurance and, if it finds a leak, you want that on record and repaired before it stresses the corrected areas.

Walk the house again with your 30-day photos in hand. Compare the same cracks, doors and windows. Movement that has stopped or reversed is the good outcome. Movement that is clearly widening in one area is the signal to call your repair company while the warranty is fresh and the cause is easy to trace. If you want an objective read, a follow-up elevation survey turns the question from a feeling into a measurement.

Six months is also a sensible checkpoint on your watering discipline. Central Texas swings hard between drought and downpour, and watering restrictions change by city and season, so confirm the current rules with your local water utility rather than assuming last year's schedule still applies.

Cosmetic repairs, re-survey and warranty records

One year is when it is finally safe to do the cosmetic work you have been holding off on. Waiting through a full seasonal cycle means the drywall patch, the re-caulked window, the tuck-pointed brick and the re-hung door happen once the movement has settled, so you are not paying to fix the same crack twice. Do the visible repairs after the annual check, not before it.

Before the cosmetic work, do a clean one-year comparison: repeat the elevation survey, line it up against the post-repair baseline, and confirm the numbers held. A stable or improved reading is your green light. If a number moved meaningfully, document it and contact the company first, because a lifetime warranty responds to timely, well-documented claims, not to a repair you have already plastered over.

Close the year by consolidating your records into one folder: the original plan and warranty, every elevation survey, the plumbing test, drainage changes, dated crack photos, and receipts. That folder is what makes the transferable warranty actually transfer, and it is what a buyer and their inspector will ask to see, so keep it with your closing documents.

• Re-run the elevation survey and compare it against your post-repair baseline.
• Confirm the plumbing test result is clean before patching anything.
• Only now: patch drywall, re-caulk, tuck-point brick and re-hang sticking doors.
• Assemble one records folder: plan, warranty, all surveys, plumbing test, photos, receipts.
• Note the warranty transfer steps in case you sell.

Reading your elevation surveys like an inspector

The single most useful habit in this whole plan is comparing elevation surveys over time. A survey maps the relative height of points across your floor, and GroundLock's free survey measures to plus or minus 0.01 inch, roughly a 64th of an inch. The absolute numbers matter less than the change between two surveys taken at the same reference points, because that change is the true measure of whether the repair is holding.

When you compare a post-repair baseline to a six-month or one-year survey, you are looking for drift, not perfection. No slab in expansive clay country is dead flat, and a fraction of an inch of seasonal movement between wet and dry is expected and harmless. What you are hunting for is a consistent trend in one area, especially near a plumbing line or a spot where drainage is still poor, because a trend points to a cause you can fix.

Keep the surveys in the same units and orientation so the comparison is apples to apples, and ask your engineer or repair company to walk you through any point that shifted more than the others. On the west and north side of the Balcones Escarpment, where thin soils sit over Edwards limestone, movement patterns differ from the deep-clay east and south, so local context changes what counts as normal.

If you ever cannot interpret a survey, that is a reason to book a proper follow-up rather than guess. A professional read of two surveys is faster and cheaper than reacting to a crack you misjudged.

• Compare, don't admire: The gap between two surveys at identical points tells the story, not either survey alone.
• Same points, same units: Reuse the exact reference locations so the six-month and one-year readings line up cleanly.
• Trend beats snapshot: A single high reading is noise; movement drifting one direction over months is a signal to act.
• Tie movement to a cause: Cross-check any drifting area against nearby plumbing lines and drainage, the usual suspects here.
• Escarpment context matters: Deep-clay and thin-limestone sites behave differently, so 'normal' movement is not one number statewide.

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