North Texas Basements

Very profession crews; they were all employees of the company and not a brokered crew. However, the foundation failed and the company walked away despite calls, emails, and certified letters. Some sections of the foundation dropped almost 3". The biggest problem was the center of the basement floor heaved about 2" pushing up a load bearing wall and causing problems above in the main living area. The drains in the footer all lead to a pipe that had become blocked during construction. When it was cleared, some water did indeed come out, however it amounted to about a gallon. The heaving problem may have been exasperated by the blocked drain pipe, but the water had to cross the area of clay under the concrete floor in order to get to the drain pipe, leaving plenty of time to have contact with the clay. The load bearing wall was built on a "shovel beam" that could not resist the upheaval. We had to hire a foundation company to not only install 21 pilings under the sunken parts of the foundation, but install six pilings and pour a 12"x30"x19' beam with void boxes under the failed shovel beam in order to to lower the "hump" in the living area of the upper floor. Additionally we had a french drain installed next to the new beam to send the water (that could be seen accumulating in the newly dug trench) to the outside the foundation. This in addition to drilling piers and pouring new footers for our balcony columns. We spent about 70% of the cost for the foundation on repairs. If you choose North Texas Basements, do not let them hire or recommend the foundation engineer. Choose your own. And install piers. And maybe consider a french drain through the center of the house. You may hear that you don't need to do that because of the experience the company has, and you'll also hear that other contractors and engineers don't know how to build a basement in Texas. That may or may not be true, but we can tell you that we had to spend a good chunk of money repairing the basement we were left with.