Foundation Inspection Schertz, TX.

Schertz sits where Blackland Prairie clay drains toward the Cibolo Creek watershed, and that in-between geography is hard on foundations. The Houston Black clay under much of town carries plasticity indices in the 40 to 60 range, so it swells when the wet season saturates it and shrinks when a Central Texas summer bakes it dry. A foundation here can be settling on one corner and heaving in the middle at once. You can't tell which by looking at a crack.

That's the reason to start with a real inspection rather than a repair quote. A GroundLock elevation survey reads the floor to within a hundredth of an inch across the perimeter and an interior grid, then turns those numbers into a contour map of how the slab has moved. The point isn't to sell piers, it's to find out whether you even have a structural problem, what's driving it, and what an honest fix would cost before anyone touches the house.

What the elevation survey actually measures

Every Schertz inspection captures the same data set so the engineering read is repeatable, not a hunch:

• Floor elevations to ±0.01 in. (1/64 in.) around the full slab perimeter and across an interior grid, mapped as contour lines of differential movement.
• The dominant pattern, edge settlement from soil drying, center heave from moisture trapped under the slab, or localized drop at a failing interior grade beam, since each points to a different cause.
• Crack geometry: stair-step cracks in brick mortar usually mean settlement near that corner, while horizontal cracks in veneer near grade suggest lateral soil pressure or heave.
• Interior doors: binding at the top corner nearest the slab edge reads as edge settlement; binding at the latch side often means center heave.
• Site drainage against the standard 6-inch fall over the first 10 feet, plus downspout discharge, flatwork slope, and soil-to-siding clearance.

Why the ±0.01-in. resolution matters on Cibolo Creek clay

High-plasticity clay almost never moves uniformly. On a single Schertz slab you can find a lifted corner, a humped center, and a settled edge at once, and the eye just averages them into a vague sense that "the floor feels off." The tight resolution separates those signals: a low, drying rim usually means edge desiccation feeding on poor drainage, while a central dome means moisture is accumulating under the slab.

That distinction changes everything downstream. The active zone in Schertz, the depth where seasonal moisture swings stress the soil, typically runs 6 to 10 feet below grade, and deeper next to mature trees whose roots pull moisture hard during dry spells. Concrete pressed piers that stop in the upper part of that zone stay inside the moving soil, which is why they can drift under the same shrink-swell force that cracked the slab.

Reading the survey correctly is what lets the plan specify honest targets: where load-bearing strata sits below that active zone, how many galvanized steel piers reach it, their spacing, and the expected lift at each location. Guess at the mechanism and you guess at the fix.

How a GroundLock inspection in Schertz runs

Drainage is part of the diagnosis

Before recommending any structural work, the inspection weighs the moisture conditions feeding the movement. The benchmark is a minimum 6-inch drop in grade over the first 10 feet from the foundation. Flatter than that and rainwater ponds against the edge beam, driving the exact wet/dry cycling this Blackland clay is prone to.

Correcting drainage doesn't undo movement that's already happened, but skipping it guarantees the problem returns no matter how many piers go in. That's why the report documents downspouts, flatwork slope, and soil-to-siding clearance alongside the elevation data. If surface drainage is part of the picture, you'll see it called out rather than buried.

If the survey does point to repair, GroundLock's steel piers are driven hydraulically to load-bearing strata below the active zone, work most homes stay occupied through, backed by a lifetime transferable warranty, with financing available and projects typically $4,500 to $14,000. But that's not the point of the inspection. The point is a clear, measured answer to one question: what is my foundation doing, and what does it honestly need?

Schertz foundation inspection questions