Two hundred and twenty midcentury modern houses by Donald Honn, built 1954 to 1957 on slab on grade with the air ducts cast into the concrete. It's the most specific foundation story in Tulsa.
Lortondale runs from 26th to 31st Street between Yale and Hudson, on what used to be the Lorton family farm and then the Meadowbrook Country Club grounds. Howard Grubb bought the land in 1952 and hired architect Donald Honn to design a tract of modern houses at moderate prices. Low pitched roofs, open plans, walls of floor to ceiling glass on the back, and central heat and air in every house, which almost nobody in Tulsa had in 1954. The FHA thought modern was a fad and wouldn't guarantee the loans, so only 220 of the planned 540 got built. The Tulsa Preservation Commission has had it flagged as National Register eligible since 2004.
Slab on grade, every one of them. That was new for Tulsa in 1954, when nearly everything else in Midtown was pier and beam. And Honn put the HVAC ductwork inside the slab. The supply ducts run through the concrete to floor registers along the glass walls. It was a clever way to heat a house with that much glass. It also means the slab has hollow channels running through it, and 70 years later those channels are where the trouble starts.
These are long, low houses with a lot of slab edge for their size. The grade beams are shallow by today's standards. The whole house sits on the top two feet of smectite clay.
Three things, and they stack.
First, the clay. A dry summer like 2011 or 2022 pulls the perimeter of the slab down while the middle stays put. A wet spring heaves it back, unevenly. On a brick house you see that as a crack at the corner. On a Lortondale house you see it in the glass. A floor to ceiling window wall doesn't flex. When the slab under it drops a half inch, the frame racks, the sliders bind, and in bad cases a pane cracks.
Second, the ducts. In slab ductwork sits in clay that gets wet. Over 70 years the metal corrodes, the joints open, and ground water finds its way in. Homeowners here know the smell from the floor registers after a hard rain. Wet ducts mean wet soil under one part of the slab, and that means uneven movement.
Third, the plumbing. Original cast iron drains and copper or galvanized supply lines run under and through the slab. A leak under a Lortondale slab washes out the clay, opens a void, and the slab drops into it. You can't see it. The first sign is a water bill or one corner of the house going down on its own.
The neighborhood was built on open farm and golf ground, so the trees are the ones the first owners planted. Seventy years later a lot of them are big, and a big tree 15 feet from a shallow slab edge pulls that side dry every August.
Owners here care about the houses, so remodels have mostly been careful. But a lot of kitchens and baths were redone in the 80s and 90s, and we find plenty of slabs where somebody cut a trench for new plumbing and patched it without compacting underneath.
Push piers at the perimeter, most of the time. Steel piers get driven down past the clay to stable soil, brackets go under the grade beam, and we lift the settled edge back to level slowly, with the glass walls monitored the whole way. Piers go in from outside, which keeps us clear of the duct runs inside the slab.
Polyurethane foam can lift an interior section that's dropped less than two inches, but only after we've mapped the ducts and the plumbing. Foam in a duct is a problem you don't want.
If a slab leak caused the settlement, the plumber goes first. Lifting over an active leak is wasted money.
Written quote after a free inspection. No phone numbers.
Yes. We locate the ducts before we drill or drive anything, and we don't inject foam anywhere near them. Push piers go in from outside at the perimeter, which keeps us clear of the duct runs.
That's the risk we manage hardest here. We lift slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, with the glass wall monitored the whole way.
Water bill jumps, a warm or damp spot on the floor, a musty smell from a floor register, or one corner of the house dropping on its own. A plumber with leak detection gear can confirm it without breaking concrete.
Foundation work isn't visible from the street, so it isn't the kind of change the preservation folks look at. You still need a City of Tulsa permit for structural work. We pull it.
Yes. We measure the slab, check the perimeter, look at the duct registers, and write you a quote. No charge.
Nearby neighborhoods: Midtown Tulsa | South Tulsa
Related service: Slab foundation repair and piers
Related reading: Polyurethane foam slabjacking | Helical vs push piers for Tulsa soil
We come look, you get a written quote. No pressure.