Kenton: Foundation Lift With Push Piers

The situation

A two-story addition had added enough weight to the original 1920s foundation (opens in a new tab) that one corner began settling within a few years, cracking the brick veneer above it in a stair-step pattern. The corner was carrying more load than the original footing was sized for.

What we did

We excavated to the footing and drove 3 push piers hydraulically, using the weight of the house itself to advance each pier to refusal against dense, load-bearing soil well below the footing. Brackets transferred the load from the footing onto the piers, and the corner was lifted back toward level with synchronized hydraulic jacks.

The outcome

The corner lifted five eighths of an inch and the stair-step cracking has not progressed since. Push piers were the right call here specifically because the structure was heavy enough to drive them to full capacity, which is not true of every house we see.

Push piers and helical piers solve the same problem 2 different ways, and the choice comes down to how much the structure above weighs. The free inspection is where that gets decided, not guessed at from a brochure.

By the numbers