Free Foundation Inspection in Tulsa, OK

Floor readings, a crawl space entry, a drainage check, and written findings you can hand to the next bidder. Not a glance from the curb.

Every foundation company in Tulsa says the inspection is free. What they mean by "inspection" is the part that varies. Some of them send a salesman who looks at your brick from the driveway, nods, and writes a pier count on a clipboard. Ours takes 60 to 90 minutes, puts an instrument on your floor, and ends with a document. Here's what that looks like, what a structural engineer adds on top of it, and how to tell a real inspection from a sales call.

What a real foundation inspection involves

The interview

We start by asking what you noticed and when. A door that scrapes since the spring rains. A crack over the garage that showed up after the 2011 drought and hasn't moved since. Whether the sprinklers run on one side of the house and not the other. That timeline narrows down what's happening before we measure anything.

Zip level floor survey

This is the part most "free inspections" skip. We set a zip level in the middle of the house and take elevation readings in every room, usually 15 to 30 points on a typical Tulsa home. The readings go on a sketch of the floor plan. A house that reads within half an inch corner to corner is in good shape no matter how ugly the crack over the door looks. A house that's down two inches at the southwest corner has a problem, even if the drywall is freshly painted. The numbers settle arguments that eyeballs can't.

Exterior walk

Every side of the house, slow. We're looking at the brick for stair step cracks, the mortar joints at the corners, the gap under the siding, the slab edge where the ground has pulled away, and the trim around windows and doors. We photograph every crack and note its width. We also look at the trees. A big oak within 15 feet of the foundation pulls a lot of water out of smectite clay in July.

Crawl space entry

If the house is pier and beam, we go under it. Not with a flashlight from the access hatch. All the way in. We check the piers for lean and rot, the sills for moisture damage, the joists for sag, and the dirt for standing water or that chalky white line that shows where water sat last spring. Older Brookside and Florence Park homes almost always have something worth seeing down there, and you can't diagnose it from the living room.

Drainage check

Where the downspouts dump, which way the yard slopes, whether the flower bed edging is damming water against the wall, and where the AC condensate drips all summer. Half the foundation problems in this town are water problems first. If the fix is a downspout extension and a yard of topsoil instead of piers, that's what we'll tell you.

Written findings

You get a report. It includes the floor readings on a diagram, the crack photos with widths, what we found in the crawl space, the drainage notes, and a specific recommendation: how many piers if any, what kind, how deep, and any drainage work that should come first or alongside. Then a price. If a company won't put its findings in writing, it won't stand behind them either.

What a structural engineer adds

A contractor's inspection tells you what's wrong and what it'll cost to fix. A structural engineer's report tells you the same thing from someone who doesn't profit from the answer. In Tulsa, a residential engineer's inspection and stamped report runs $400 to $1,200 depending on the house and whether they need to draw pier locations.

You want one when:

• A basement wall is bowing or has a horizontal crack
• Two contractors gave you very different diagnoses or pier counts
• You're filing an insurance claim and need an independent cause
• The job needs a City of Tulsa permit with engineered drawings, which most pier work does
• You're buying or selling and a lender or buyer wants a stamp on it

For a hairline crack and a floor that reads level, you don't need an engineer. We'll say so. For a 12 pier job on a two story in Broken Arrow, the engineer's fee is cheap compared to getting the pier count wrong.

Questions to ask whoever inspects your house

• Can I see the floor readings? Where were they taken?
• How deep will the piers go, and how do you know when you've hit bearing soil?
• Why this many piers and not fewer?
• Is there drainage work that should happen before or with the piers?
• Who pulls the permit, and is the fee in the quote?
• Is the warranty transferable, and can I read the actual document?
• What happens if the house moves again after the work?

A good inspector answers all of these without checking with the office. Someone reading from a script will stall on the depth question every time.

Red flags of a bad inspection

• A quote from the curb. No instrument on the floor, no crawl space entry, and a price in under 20 minutes. That's a guess with a dollar sign.
• No measurements. "It looks like it's dropped about two inches" is not a reading. Ask to see the number.
• Problems everywhere. If every crack is structural and every corner needs a pier, you're being sold, not inspected.
• Today only pricing. Foundation repair is engineering. A real quote is good for 30 days.
• Door knockers after a storm. Out of state crews show up after every flood and drought year. By the time their work fails, they're gone.
• Pressure to skip other bids. Anyone who says getting a second opinion voids their discount is scared of the second opinion.

How to read the quote

Once you've got two or three written quotes, line them up. Each one should break out the pier count, the pier type (push, helical, or something else), the target depth, any interior work that means cutting the slab, drainage items, the permit fee, and the warranty. If one quote is a single lump sum, ask for line items. If one calls for 14 piers and the others say 8, ask why. The honest ones explain. The others drop their price on the spot, which tells you the first number was padded.

A reasonable deposit is 10 to 25 percent. Half up front, especially in cash, is a scam pattern. And check that the permit is in the contractor's name. Unpermitted pier work in Tulsa surfaces at closing when the appraiser asks for paperwork you don't have. Our guide to picking a contractor and the permit rundown cover both in more detail.

FAQs

Related: Foundation repair | Crawl space repair | Crack repair | Owasso