You've got a proposal in your hand, or you're about to have two or three. Foundation repair is a job most people buy exactly once, so nobody arrives with practice at reading one, and every foundation repair company you call is going to tell you they do good work.
The useful move isn't looking for something to distrust. A better one is to ask a small number of real questions and listen for whether the answer is complete. Every question below comes with the reason it matters structurally and what a full answer actually contains, so you can hold any proposal up against it, ours included.
A complete answer names what moved the house, how many piers the repair needs and why that many, how deep the steel has to go and whether that depth is included, whether the job stabilizes or lifts, who repairs the brick afterward, and what the warranty covers and whether it transfers when you sell.
What moved your house, and why?
Ask this one first, and ask it before anybody quotes a number.
A pier is a remedy for a specific thing that happened under a specific part of your footing. Without a cause, the count and the placement are guesses, and the same symptom outdoors can come from framing, from a brick veneer letting go, or from ground that washed out. Signs of foundation problems walks through how those look different from each other.
A complete answer is a small story about your lot: where the water goes, what the grade does, what the ground was made of before the house went on it, and which corner carries the load that moved. You'll read everywhere that Georgia red clay swells and shrinks and heaves houses around. The USDA actually rates the clay under most of metro Atlanta as low for shrink and swell, so an answer built on water, slope and fill is the more accurate one, and it's the one you can go outside and verify yourself.
Long local experience is worth something for exactly this reason. Decades of digging up footings in the same few counties teaches somebody what the subdivisions around here were built on and how they were graded.
How many piers, and what decides that number?
Pier count is the single biggest driver of your price, and it's a judgment, not a formula. Which is why it deserves an explanation rather than a number.
Two things set it: how much of the structure has moved, and how much wall each pier can pick up. The spacing itself is a standard the trade works to, and the owner describes the starting point plainly: "we'll go 5 foot on center, start within a foot or two of the first crack, space them apart."
Scale follows the structure. On a set of masonry steps, for example, the arithmetic is visible from the sidewalk: "if you have 8 steps instead of 4, you need 4 piers instead of 2."
A complete answer tells you where the first pier goes and why, how far apart the rest are, and what each one is holding up. A pier under a chimney or a center garage column carries far more than a typical foundation pier, so the count and the price don't move together in a straight line.
Piers don't all have to go in at once
Worth knowing before you assume the whole number is the only option. When the budget won't reach, the movement can be addressed where it's actually happening: "If it's split, and it pulled, and they only have a budget to work with, we can work and guarantee to put 3 out of the 8 in." The rest stays on the table. "Monitor that, and if the other side starts to pull, we can go back and add them," and the later piers don't disturb the ones already carrying weight.
A count set without a visit is a range, not a quote
Somebody has to measure. "You gotta go out there to get the proposal," as the owner puts it, and when a number does get discussed ahead of a visit, the honest version is labeled as what the standard spacing would suggest rather than presented as the count your house needs.
How deep will the steel go, and is depth in the price?
Depth is the one number nobody can know in advance, which makes it the most important thing to settle in writing.
Steel is driven until it meets ground dense enough to resist the full weight of the house above it. Sometimes solid ground is close. Sometimes it's a long way down, and it can be different at two corners of the same house. The owner is blunt about the limits of prediction: "you don't know if you have to go down 70 feet in the earth. Or if you're only going to go down 11 feet. You don't know. Nobody knows. We kind of know a little bit based on the lay of the land."
So the question that matters isn't how deep, which nobody can promise. The question is who carries the risk of the answer. Ask whether pier depth is included at the quoted price or billed by the foot past some limit, and get that sentence on paper. At Anglin's, pier depth is unlimited and included, and the exact terms are published on the foundation repair page.
Is this job stabilizing the house, or lifting it?
Here's the distinction that decides what you'll see from your driveway, and the one homeowners are least often told about.
Stopping the movement and putting the structure back are different outcomes with different prices, and a repair can aim at three different places. It can stabilize, which means the house stops moving and stays exactly where it sits today, cracks and all. It can come part of the way back. Or it can go back to level.
The middle option is the one that needs explaining, because it sounds like a compromise and is usually the right engineering answer: "that little bit is to split the difference from where it's at to perfect level. That little bit is to split the difference so we don't cause damage."
Why split it? A house that settled slowly over twenty years has been finished, remodeled and re-tiled in its settled shape. Tile, cabinets, countertops and trim have all been fitted to the floor as it is now. Pushing that floor all the way back to level in one afternoon puts every one of those finishes in tension, and something up there gives. Lifting a wall that has bowed outward has its own order of operations, covered in push piers vs helical piers.
A complete answer says which of the three your job is aiming at, says why, and says what you should expect to still see afterward. The word will be in the contract either way, so read for it.
Who repairs the brick after the house comes back up?
Lifting a footing moves everything sitting on it, and the brick above it moves too. Mortar joints that opened as the corner dropped close back up as it rises, and what's left needs pointing and matching.
Sequence is the reason this belongs in the same conversation as the piers. The masonry has to be done after the lift, not before, so it's either part of this job and on this proposal, or it's a separate trip by a separate trade after your yard has already been opened up and closed back.
A complete answer tells you which line of the proposal covers the mortar and the brick, and whether the same crew that sets the steel does it before they leave.
What does the warranty cover, and does it transfer?
Warranty is where proposals differ most and get compared least, because the word appears on all of them.
Three things worth asking about. First, what's actually warrantied. At Anglin's the pier itself is the covered item, and the owner is specific: "all the mechanics of the pier, all the material, the design of the pier, it holds up for the life of the structure. We call it life of the structure, fully transferable to the new homeowner."
Second, whether it transfers, and how many times. Transfer matters more than most people expect, because it's the thing that answers a buyer's question in a future closing. Anglin's transfer is "indefinite, however many owners there are."
Third, and most usefully, what the limits are. A warranty with no stated exclusions isn't a stronger warranty, just a vaguer one. The named limits here are "acts of God, like a tornado, a storm, an earthquake" and negligence, which in practice means gutters and drainage left unmaintained until water washes out what the piers are sitting near. And because the repairs aren't all the same kind of work, "we have a separate warranty for each category," so the term covering a pier is not automatically the term covering a different repair on the same invoice. Ask which category your job falls in.
Who will actually be in your yard?
Two different people are involved in every foundation job: whoever prices it, and whoever builds it. Worth knowing whether they work for the same company and how long each has been doing it.
The reason is practical rather than sentimental. Where the piers go is a structural judgment made at the estimate and executed weeks later, so the person making it needs to know what the crew can actually do at that corner. At Anglin's, both ends are in-house: "the people that come out to quote it, and then the crew members that come out and do it. This is all they do, this is all they know." The crew leaders who run the installs have been here 10 to 20 years.
Credentials are the other half of that answer, and the complete version is short and checkable: workers' compensation and general liability carried through a commercial policy, a current business license, BBB accreditation, 811 training so utilities get located before anybody digs, and brackets built to ASTM specs with engineered drawings behind them. One thing that surprises people: "we are not required to have a general contractor's license in this field... since we're not builders or pulling permits on homes." So asking for a contractor license number is the wrong test here. Asking for the insurance certificates is the right one.
What the paperwork has to say before you sign
Everything above ends up in a document, and the document is what you're actually buying.
The scope, in enough detail to check later
How many piers, where they go, what the crew is aiming at, and what happens to the masonry. A proposal you can hold up against the finished job is worth more than a low number with nothing to measure against.
The price, and what could change it
Ask what would move the price and under what circumstances, and look for those circumstances named in the contract rather than described out loud. Anglin's holds the quoted price on 98% of jobs, and the exceptions are specific and written down: excavating deeper than 3 feet, cutting through thick concrete, or shaving back a footing that wasn't poured to code. "Everything's on the contract up front," so "they know what the expenses are going to be when they sign the contract."
What happens if the ground surprises everybody
Worth asking exactly how you find out. On the rare job where something unforeseen turns up mid-dig, the process here is a conversation before more work happens, not a line on the final invoice: "the phone call is made to the homeowner, or knock on the door, here's where we're at."
Something you can read in one sitting
Length is a fair thing to ask about. Anglin's contracts run "two pages, no fine print," which is short enough that reading the whole thing before you sign is realistic.
What a thorough look at a house sounds like
Most of what's above shows up during the visit, before any paperwork exists. One homeowner described an estimate that ended with no work sold at all:
"Gus spent about an hour and a half carefully inspecting our home. First, he listened to information about the history of our home and our concerns about changes we were noticing. Next, he checked the inside for any signs of cracking or other evidence of shifts in the foundation. After that, he took measurements throughout the first floor of our home to determine precisely the amount of unevenness, if any, existed in the level of the floor. Finally, he spent a good deal of time in our 4 foot high crawl space carefully inspecting the foundation, support beams, floor joists, sub-flooring, etc. Ultimately, he recommended that we not do any structural repairs at this time."
A Reckford, 5 stars
An hour and a half, inside and underneath, and an answer of "not yet." A visit that produces a real diagnosis can end that way, and it should be able to.
Every question in one place, for any foundation repair estimate
Take these with you, and ask every company the same ones:
- What moved, and why did it move there? Listen for water, grade and fill, and for a reason tied to your lot.
- How many piers, and what decides that number? Listen for spacing, for where the first one goes, and for what each is carrying.
- How deep will they go, and is depth included or billed? Nobody can promise the depth. Somebody has to own the risk of it.
- Are we stabilizing, coming partway back, or going to level? All three are legitimate. Only one is in your contract.
- Who repairs the brick and mortar, and is it on this proposal?
- What exactly does the warranty cover, what voids it, and does it transfer when I sell?
- Who prices it, who builds it, and how long have they done this?
- Can I see the scope, the price and the exceptions in writing before I decide?
Frequently asked questions about hiring a foundation repair company
Should I get more than one foundation repair estimate?
Yes, and getting three is common on a repair this size. The value isn't only the price comparison. Hearing the same house explained by different people tells you a great deal, and if the explanations of the cause line up, you can be fairly confident about what's happening under there before you spend anything.
What if two proposals recommend a different number of piers?
Ask each one to walk you through the reasoning rather than defending the number. Pier count comes from where the movement is, how far it reaches, and what each pier has to carry, so two thoughtful people can land in different places on the same house. A count that comes with a starting point, a spacing and a load explanation is one you can evaluate. A count with none of those is just a figure.
Does a foundation repair contractor need a license in Georgia?
Not a general contractor's license, in most cases, because this kind of structural repair work doesn't involve building a home or pulling a permit for one. So the more useful request is for the insurance: general liability and workers' compensation, carried by the company whose crew will be on your property, plus a current business license. Ask for the certificates rather than the claim.
Do I need a structural engineer before I hire anyone?
Not usually, though an engineer's report is genuinely useful on a complicated house or a disputed diagnosis, and any good contractor will work from one. Worth knowing the difference between two documents people mix up: a home inspector lists what they see and refers it on, while an engineer takes responsibility for the prescription, because, as the owner puts it, an engineer is "on the hook, because they're going to tell you how to do it."
Will the estimate cost me anything?
At Anglin's a homeowner visit is free, and an estimator comes out to look at the house rather than pricing it from your description. Free also means an answer of "nothing structural is wrong here" costs you nothing, which is a real outcome and happens often enough to be worth the phone call.
How soon should I expect a written proposal?
Within a couple of days is a reasonable expectation. Calling here reaches a live person, someone is usually out to look within a day or two, and the written proposal follows in about the same window, with scheduling typically one to four weeks out from there.
Ask us the same questions you ask everyone
Nothing on this list is a test anybody should mind taking. A free visit gets you a real diagnosis of what moved and why, and a written proposal you can hold up against any other one you've collected.
Anglin's has been repairing metro Atlanta foundations since 1930, and the foundation repair page publishes the pricing, the warranty and the process in full.
Call 770-422-2924 for a free look.