Concrete footings in Redwood City CA - built for the ground under your house

Most footing calls start one of two ways. Either you're adding onto the house, or something in the house has started moving and you want to know why. The price turns on what the ground is like, how deep we have to dig to reach soil that holds still, how much steel goes in and how easily a crew and a concrete truck can get to the spot. The schedule turns on that same ground, on whether your lot needs a soil study or a permit before we dig, and on the weather once we do. I put all of that in the written estimate after I've seen your lot.

The ground under your lot shapes the footings more than anything else, so I look at what you're building on before I size anything. Then I find out what the footing has to carry, whether that's a wall, a post or a whole room, and we work out how deep and wide it goes and how much rebar, the steel bars that hold concrete together when the ground shifts, sits inside it. Our crew digs the trenches to the planned depth and cleans out loose dirt so the footing bears on firm subgrade, the soil it actually sits on, then ties the steel up off the bottom so it ends up inside the concrete instead of lying in the dirt. We sort out where the water goes while the trench is open, pour, let the concrete cure, which is the wait while it hardens enough to carry weight, then backfill and clean up. Footings are the part of the job you'll never see again, so they're the first place a tight budget wants to trim. I'd trim somewhere else, because concrete is patient and will spend years showing you exactly where you saved money.

When the house has already sunk, new footings alone won't lift it back, and foundation raising is the work that brings it up before the new support goes in. If an old slab or walkway is in the way, concrete cutting lets us take out only what we need. And if the footings you have are doing their job, I'll tell you so, because I'd rather say no than sell you work you don't need.

On the permit side, Redwood City's Building Department sets up contractor accounts for contractors who hold a valid Redwood City business license, and it's the office to ask if you want to check on your own job. Whether your footings need a permit isn't something I'll guess at over the phone. If they do, I'll say so at the estimate, and we handle the paperwork and inspections with your city or the county.

The ground here can change a lot over a short distance. Regional maps put the highest liquefaction hazard in old fill laid over former bay floor along the edge of the Bay, with some risk near larger streams that carry loose young soil, and bay mud, while less likely to liquefy than people once thought, shakes harder than other ground in an earthquake. San Mateo County's hazard maps show general risk by neighborhood, not what's under your particular lot, so I treat them as a starting point and look at the ground itself before choosing between standard footings and deeper piers. We're based in Redwood City and work up and down the Peninsula and into the South Bay, and the same questions about clay and fill come up on jobs in San Mateo and Menlo Park.