Foundation Repair in Wimberley, TX

Wimberley sits in a limestone valley where two waterways meet, and that combination drives nearly every foundation call we get in town.

On the uplands, the ground is classic Hill Country: a thin skin of soil over hard limestone, cut by slopes that drain toward Cypress Creek and the Blanco. A foundation up here often rests partly on rock and partly on shallow soil that shifts with the wet and dry cycle, so one corner settles while the rest of the house stays put. Sloped lots add erosion to the mix, with storm runoff scouring soil from the downhill side of the home year after year.

Down in the valley the story changes. Homes near the Blanco River and Cypress Creek sit on river-deposited soil with water moving through it, and Wimberley homeowners know how quickly that water can rise. The Memorial Day flood of 2015 sent the Blanco far above flood stage through the middle of town, and even in an ordinary year the spring-fed flow from Jacob's Well keeps the ground near Cypress Creek damp. Saturated soil loses bearing strength, wood piers and beams under older cottages rot from below, and repeated wetting and drying rocks foundations out of level.

Add in the age of the housing stock, from pier and beam cabins built when Wimberley was a small resort town to new construction on cut hillside pads, and you get the range of problems we see: settled corners on the hills, soft floors near the creeks, and stair-step cracks in the limestone veneer that faces so many homes here.

Repair work near the water takes a different plan than work on the hills. For creekside and river-bottom homes we favor piers that reach through the wet upper soil to solid bearing, and we size the crawl space work around the reality that this ground stays damp. Where beams have rotted we replace them, and we set new supports on footings that will not wash or tilt when the next high water comes through. Then we deal with the water itself: gutters that discharge well away from the house, grading that sheds runoff toward the street or the creek rather than the crawl space, and French drains that intercept water before it reaches the foundation. On the hillside lots the same thinking applies in reverse, moving storm runoff around the house instead of letting it cut under the uphill footing.