Foundation Repair Questions — Gregg County, Texas

No. Gregg County Foundation Repair is a referral service. We collect your request and pass it to an independent foundation repair company that works in your area. That company handles the inspection, the pricing, the permit and the warranty.

No. Homeowners pay nothing. Contractors in the network pay us a referral fee, which funds the site. It does not affect your quote and you are not obligated to hire anyone who contacts you.

The soil here is layered rather than uniform. Sandy surface soils like Darco and Lilbert sit over firm clay subsoils in the Sacul, Kirvin, Cuthbert and Bowie series. Rain soaks quickly through the sand, then perches on the slow-draining clay and moves sideways, wetting one part of a foundation more than another. Longview gets close to 50 inches of rain a year, mostly in spring, followed by a hot dry late summer. That wet-dry cycle on an uneven subgrade is what moves houses here.

No, and the difference matters. The Dallas area sits on deep, uniform, high-shrink Blackland Prairie clay. The Lubbock area has caliche and very different rainfall. Gregg County has sand over clay in a high-rainfall Piney Woods setting. Repair approaches that make sense on the Blackland Prairie are not automatically right here, and drainage correction plays a much larger role in East Texas.

There is no statewide general contractor license in Texas and no state license specific to foundation repair. The state licenses electricians and HVAC contractors through TDLR and plumbers through TSBPE, and engineers through TBPELS. General construction is regulated by cities. Contractors working inside Longview register and pull permits through the City of Longview's online permit portal, run by Development Services.

Sometimes. In Texas, a written structural evaluation is engineering work and must come from a licensed professional engineer. For a small, clearly localized problem, an engineer may be unnecessary. For a significant lift, an unusual movement pattern, a dispute with an insurer, or documentation you will need at resale, an independent engineer's report is worth the money because that engineer is not selling you piers.

Age is the fastest clue. Houses in Longview and Kilgore built before roughly the 1950s are frequently pier and beam, raised off the ground with a crawl space. Post-war and modern construction is usually a concrete slab poured on grade. If you have floor vents in the exterior walls, exterior foundation vents near ground level, or a hollow sound when you walk, you likely have a raised floor.

No. Concrete shrinks as it cures and hairline cracks are normal. What matters is width, direction, whether the two sides are at different heights, and whether it is growing. A crack you can slide a nickel into, a crack with vertical offset, or a diagonal crack running from a door or window corner deserves attention.

In East Texas, more often than people expect. If the house has not moved much yet and the trigger is water pooling at one elevation, correcting grade, extending downspouts and installing a French drain can stabilize things without any structural work. If the house has already dropped measurably, drainage work is still necessary but it will not lift anything back.

Mature trees pull a large volume of water out of the soil during the growing season, and in a drought they will draw it from beneath a slab if that is where the moisture is. In a county where loblolly and shortleaf pine grow right up to the house, a large tree close to the foundation is a legitimate variable. Removal is not always the answer — root barriers and targeted irrigation are sometimes better.

A drainage correction or a small pier job is often a day or two. A full perimeter lift on a slab house is typically several days. Pier and beam re-leveling varies widely depending on access under the house and how much of the framing has rotted. Any contractor should give you a schedule in writing before starting.

Yes, and we say so plainly even though it is not in our interest. Scopes vary a great deal between companies for the same house. Getting a second opinion is how you find out whether the first one is proposing forty piers where twelve would do.

The number and type of piers, target depth or the criterion used to stop driving, exactly which portions of the house are being lifted, how much lift is being attempted, what happens to interior finishes, cleanup and landscape restoration, payment schedule, and the warranty terms including whether it transfers to a buyer.

Yes. A large share of Gregg County is unincorporated, and the acreage properties between Longview, Gladewater and Kilgore are common. Permitting requirements differ outside city limits, and the contractor should tell you what applies at your address.

The property address, roughly when the house was built, whether it is slab or raised, what you are seeing and where, when you first noticed it, and whether it changes with the seasons. Photos help a great deal.