Push Piers in Tulsa, OK

Steel pipe driven to refusal under heavy brick and slab homes. The simplest load path there is.

A push pier is a steel tube, usually about 3 inches across, pressed straight down into the ground in sections until it hits something that won't give. That something is dense soil or shale, which in Tulsa sits 18 to 30 feet down under the clay. Once the pier refuses to go further, the weight of the house gets transferred onto it through a steel bracket bolted to the footing. The clay above can swell and shrink all it wants. The house is sitting on the pier now, and the pier is sitting on rock.

What makes a push pier different from a helical pier is what drives it. There's no motor. The house does the pushing. A hydraulic ram braces against the bracket and uses the structure's own weight as the anchor to press the pipe down. That's elegant when the house is heavy. It's a problem when the house isn't.

Which Tulsa houses push piers are built for

Push piers need somewhere around 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of load at each pier location to drive correctly. That rules some houses in and some houses out.

• 1950s and 60s brick ranches in South Tulsa and Lortondale. Full brick veneer on a slab, one story but heavy. The textbook push pier house. The structure drives the pier to refusal cleanly, and the perimeter access is usually open.
• Two story brick in Maple Ridge and Brookside. Plenty of weight. If the house has a brick stem wall and a dropped corner, push piers at the perimeter are the fix.
• Heavy slab houses in Broken Arrow, Bixby, and Jenks. Brick and stone veneer, two stories, big footprints. The clay runs deep south of the river, and push piers go as deep as they need to. Some Bixby jobs go past 40 feet.

What we're fixing on those houses is almost always the same. A corner that dropped in a drought year, 2011 being the one everybody remembers, and the stair step crack in the brick that came with it. Or a whole side that settled over 20 years and the doors along it quit latching.

How the install works, step by step

1. Floor survey and pier layout. We shoot the floor with a zip level and mark pier locations under the grade beam, usually every 5 to 8 feet along the section that dropped.
2. Dig the pits. About 3 feet square at each pier, down past the bottom of the footing.
3. Prep the footing and set the bracket. The bottom of the footing gets notched flat so the bracket sits square. The bracket bolts to the concrete. If the footing is crumbling, which happens on some older slabs, we fix that first because the bracket is only as good as what it's bolted to.
4. Drive the pipe. A hydraulic ram on the bracket presses 3 foot pipe sections down one after another. Each section slides into the last. We log the hydraulic pressure on every section so we know what the ground is doing.
5. Hit refusal. When the pressure spikes and holds, the pier has reached bearing. We drive a little past that to prove it, then stop. The log shows depth and pressure for every pier.
6. Lift. Jacks on every pier come up together, a little at a time, with someone inside watching the cracks and trying the doors. We stop at stable.
7. Lock off and backfill. The bracket gets locked at final height so the pier is carrying the load permanently. Pits get filled and tamped. Landscaping goes back.
8. Fix the water. Downspouts away from the house, grade sloped away from the foundation. The pier holds that corner forever. The rest of the house still depends on the dirt.

What push piers cost in Tulsa

Push piers run $1,400 to $2,200 per pier installed. That's the lower end of pier pricing in this market. Helical piers run $1,800 to $2,800 because the shaft and plates cost more and the torque motor is extra. The spread within the push pier range comes from depth, access, and whether the steel is galvanized.

Whole jobs:

• One corner, three or four piers: $3,500 to $9,000.
• One or two sides, six to ten piers: $9,000 to $22,000.
• Most of the perimeter, 12 to 25 piers: $22,000 to $55,000.
• Interior piers through the slab: $2,200 to $3,500 each, on top of the perimeter work.

Pier count drives the total more than pier type. A house that needs eight piers is cheaper than one that needs fourteen, whichever system goes in. If a contractor quotes push piers on every house regardless of weight, that's what's in their warehouse, not what your house needs.

How long it takes

Two to four hours per pier in Tulsa clay. A typical ten pier job runs three to five working days including digging, driving, the lift, and backfill. You stay home. The hydraulic pump runs outside during the day and that's the noise.

What can go wrong

• False refusal. This is the one that matters. Dry smectite clay gets hard enough in August to stop a pier short of real bearing, especially under a lighter house. The pressure spikes, the crew calls it done, and the pier is sitting in dirt that's going to soften next spring. We read the pressure log against the depth, and if it refused at 11 feet when the neighbors hit 24, we know it's lying.
• The footing fails before the pier does. A bracket bolted to crumbly 1950s concrete can break out under load. We check the footing before we bolt anything to it.
• The lift cracks things. Brick mortar, drywall, tile. Lifting slow with someone inside keeps it to hairlines, but on a big lift, some patching afterward is normal.
• The side we didn't pier drops next. Push piers hold what they're under. If the other side of the house is dry and on its way down, we'll say so up front.

When push piers are the wrong call

• Light frame, single story, vinyl or wood siding. An Owasso ranch with no brick might not weigh enough to drive the pier through our clay. It stops short, settles again in six months. That house gets helical piers, which don't need the weight.
• Additions, porches, sunrooms, garages. Too light. Helical.
• Crawl spaces and tight side yards. A push pier rig needs room to swing. A helical can be hand carried under a Florence Park bungalow or down a 3 foot side yard. Helical.
• Driveways, patios, garage floors. Those aren't holding up a house. They get concrete leveling, which is one day and a fraction of the price.

Plenty of Tulsa houses get both. Push piers on the heavy brick front, helicals on the lighter rear addition. That's not indecision. That's matching the tool to the load.

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Read more: Helical piers vs push piers for Tulsa soil | Why settling is worse after drought years

Related: Helical piers | Slab foundation repair | Foundation repair