Foundation Inspection Bulverde, TX.

What the elevation survey actually measures

An inspection here is a measurement job, not a walk-around. Here is what a GroundLock inspector records before anyone talks about repair:

• Slab elevation, room by room, every room gets a reading with a ZIPLEVEL® PRO-2030 altimeter calibrated to ±0.01 in. (1/64 in.), then plotted as a topographic contour of the whole floor.
• The shape of the deflection, whether a corner has dropped onto a soil pocket, the center has lifted, or a mid-span zone is bridging across an eroded void in the fill.
• Soft spots over old fill, probing the cut-and-fill zones common on Bulverde's rolling lots, where uncompacted material under an interior footing behaves nothing like the rock beside it.
• Perimeter drainage and grade, measured against the six-inch-drop-over-ten-feet standard, since on rocky lots builders sometimes accept less and the water runs laterally along the limestone.
• Tree and vegetation setbacks, distance of mature live oaks and cedar elms, which pull moisture hard from whatever thin soil sits between the rock outcrops.
• Interior and exterior distress, stair-step brick cracks, racked door and window frames, and slab cracks, logged as symptoms and tied back to the elevation map.

Why a contour map beats a crack tour on this terrain

Bulverde sits at the edge of the Edwards Plateau, where thin, rocky soil drapes directly over fractured limestone. That setting is the opposite of the deep black clay east of here. Beneath a single slab you may have native soil pockets, weathered chert, caliche lenses, and karst voids in the rock below, plus rock fill or limestone base that was trucked in during construction to level an irregular pad. Some of that footing rests on competent native ground; some rests on fill that was never engineered to carry the house for decades.

Cracks tell you a house is unhappy. They do not tell you why, and on this kind of ground the why matters enormously. A diagonal crack at a window corner could mean a perimeter footing has settled onto consolidating fill, or it could mean the center of the slab has risen over a moist soil pocket. Those two problems get fixed differently. The only way to separate them is to map the actual elevations and read the pattern, which is exactly why the survey is the first thing we do and the price is zero.

The map also becomes a baseline. If the right call is to watch a borderline area for a season before committing to piers, the next reading gets compared to a number on paper instead of someone's memory of how the floor felt last spring.

What the written report tells you, and what it doesn't assume

You leave the inspection with a written, engineer-backed plan: the contour map, the high and low points, the likely mechanism behind the movement, and a recommended scope. Because Bulverde distress often comes from shallow fill consolidating or washing out along drainage paths, not deep clay heave, the report is honest about when piers are warranted and when correcting grade or drainage is the smarter first move. Not every moving slab here needs steel.

When piers are the right answer, the plan calls for galvanized steel piers driven hydraulically through the fill and soil column until they lock into the competent limestone below. Because that rock surface rises and falls by several feet across one lot, pier depths vary and each one is driven to a measured resistance rather than a set depth, the report reflects the geology instead of pretending it's uniform. Typical projects land between $4,500 and $14,000, the work is backed by a lifetime transferable warranty that passes to the next owner, and financing is available.

There is no charge, no obligation, and no signing on the spot. You get the measurements and the plan to keep, whether you hire us, get a second opinion, or simply file it away and watch the cracks.

How a Bulverde inspection runs

Bulverde foundation inspection questions