House Leveling in McAllen, TX

The most common leveling job in the Valley. We survey the floor, then raise the low areas back to elevation using the existing pier system where it is sound and new pads or piers where it is not. Raising is done slowly and in stages so the framing, drywall and glazing above it move together instead of cracking.

Old pads crumble, timber posts rot at ground contact, and shims that were never fastened work their way loose. We replace failed bearing points with properly sized pads and posts, set on soil that has been checked rather than on whatever the last crew found convenient.

A floor that flexes underfoot is usually telling you the span between supports is too long, or that a joist has split or rotted. We add intermediate support where the span calls for it and sister or replace the damaged members, which fixes the bounce rather than hiding it under new flooring.

Where a main beam has checked, rotted at a bearing end, or been notched badly for plumbing, no amount of shimming makes it right. We replace the member and correct the detail that damaged it, most often ground contact or a drainage problem alongside the structure.

Half the leveling problems we see in the Valley trace back to water sitting where it should not. While we are underneath we tell you plainly what the ground is doing, whether the grade is falling toward the house, and what would keep the correction from being undone in three years.

Raising a house moves the finishes with it. We can repair the drywall cracks, door and window binding, and trim gaps that follow the lift, so the job ends with a house that looks right rather than a house that is level and freshly cracked.

Doors and windows that bind in one season and swing free in another, a marble that always rolls the same way, cracks reopening in the same place every summer, and gaps appearing between skirting and floor. Any one of those on its own can be something else. Two or three together, on the same side of the house, is a floor that has moved. An elevation survey settles it in under an hour and it costs you nothing.

Most single-storey Valley homes are surveyed, raised and re-supported in two to four working days, and you can normally stay in the house throughout. The lift itself is deliberately slow, spread across the job rather than done in one push, because moving a structure quickly is how you turn a leveling job into a drywall job.