This is an illustrative walkthrough of a typical job, not a record of a specific customer’s project.
Foundation Repair Baton Rouge is often asked what actually happens during a foundation repair. Here’s a typical slab job on a one-story brick ranch in Baton Rouge, step by step.
The call
The homeowner has noticed the back bedroom door won’t latch, a diagonal crack over the hallway door, and a stair-step crack in the brick at the back corner. A person answers, asks where the symptoms are, and books a free evaluation for later in the week.
The evaluation (about an hour)
A laser level goes up in the living room, and a floor reading is taken in every room. The readings show the back-left corner about 1.5 inches lower than the front of the house, tapering across the back half. Cracks are measured: the brick crack is about 3/16 inch, the drywall crack hairline to 1/8 inch. Outside, the downspout at the back-left corner empties straight onto the slab edge, and a flower bed is mounded against the brick.
The written plan
The plan shows 11 exterior pressed concrete pilings along the back and left side, spaced about 7 feet apart, with the unit price for each; no interior pilings (interior work matters even more on a post-tensioned slab, where tendons must be located before any cut); a buried solid downspout line from the back-left corner to the street; and a recommendation to pull the bed back from the slab. It also recommends a plumbing test before and after lifting, because the house has original cast-iron drains.
The repair (two days)
Day 1: Pits are dug at each piling location along the beam. Precast concrete segments are pressed one at a time with a hydraulic jack using the house’s weight until each piling reaches refusal. Depths are logged.
Day 2: Caps and steel shims go on, and the corner is lifted gradually while the laser readings are watched. The target isn’t perfectly flat — just back within a reasonable tolerance without stressing plaster and plumbing. Pits are backfilled and tamped, the downspout line is trenched and installed, and every point is re-measured.
The paperwork
The homeowner receives the before-and-after elevation readings, the piling map with each depth, the plumbing test results and the invoice. The back bedroom door latches again; the drywall crack gets patched a few weeks later once the house has settled into its new position.
See slab foundation repair and foundation repair cost in Baton Rouge for prices, and our pier and beam vs slab foundation comparison for how repairs differ on a raised house.