Foundation Repair in Hollywood Park, TX

Hollywood Park sits at about 961 feet, right where the flat clay country of the San Antonio plain climbs into the first limestone hills below the Edwards Plateau. That transition runs straight through the neighborhood, and it is the root of most foundation trouble here.

On many lots a modest layer of clay and clay loam rests on limestone, and the depth to that rock changes from street to street and sometimes across a single yard. A slab can end up bearing on shallow rock at one end and on a deeper pocket of expansive clay at the other. The clay end swells after wet winters and shrinks hard in a Bexar County drought, while the rock end barely moves, so the house hinges along the line between them. That is why so many Hollywood Park homes crack at one wing or one corner rather than settling evenly.

The trees add a second layer. Hollywood Park was laid out in the late 1950s as a large-lot community under the live oaks, and those oaks are now huge. In a dry summer a mature oak pulls an enormous amount of moisture out of the soil around it, drying the clay beside a slab faster than the soil under the middle of the house. The result is a slow curl at the edges of the foundation, often on the side shaded by the biggest trees.

Finally, the housing stock itself is older. Most foundations in town were poured or framed between the 1960s and the 1980s, before modern post-tension slabs were common, so they have had decades of shrink and swell cycles to accumulate movement. The repair that works here is steel piers pressed through the clay and seated on the limestone below, paired with drainage that keeps water moving off the hilly lots.