Foundation Repair in Jacksonville, FL
The cause decides the repair. We find it first.
Start Your Project
Ground conditions by area
Coastal plain, not karst.
Duval County sits well north of Florida's sinkhole belt. The problems here are different, and so is the right repair.
What you're seeing, and why
Four causes account for most of the cracking, sticking doors, and sloping floors in Duval County homes. They look alike from inside the house. They are not repaired the same way.
Who installs the repair
BTR Foundation Services is the installation arm of Bechtol Engineering and Testing: same company, same engineers, operating under its own name for foundation repair work.
The arrangement exists for a practical reason. Foundation repair needs both an engineer to design it and a crew to build it. Splitting those across two companies is where accountability gets lost, and it is why so many Jacksonville homeowners end up holding a warranty from a contractor and a report from someone else who never saw the installation.
The Engineer who designs your pier layout works in the same building as the crew that installs it, and signs the certification when it is done.
Services in Duval County
Every service, statewide, self-performed.
-
Environmental Engineering
Phase I and Phase II ESAs, FDEP site assessments and solid waste permitting. -
Geotechnical Engineering
Soil borings, foundation recommendations, sinkhole evaluation and stormwater design. -
Geotechnical Drilling
SPT borings, auger and mud rotary drilling and monitoring wells, with five company-owned rigs. -
Commercial Inspections
Foundation evaluations, structural inspections and ground depression assessments, sealed by a PE. -
Construction Materials Testing
CTQP-certified soil, concrete, asphalt and masonry testing from our DeLand laboratory. -
Forensic Engineering
Determining why foundations, structures and embankments failed. Sealed reports for attorneys and carriers.
What a depression is actually telling you
A depression in a parking lot, a yard, or open ground has four common explanations: karst, a utility failure, buried debris, or fill that was never properly compacted. They look identical from the surface and the remedies are not remotely comparable.
Establishing which one you have is a specific engineering question with a structural or geotechnical answer, which is why it needs an Engineer rather than a general inspector.
Jacksonville common questions
Why do foundation cracks open and close with the seasons?
That pattern usually points to expansive clay rather than the foundation losing bearing. Hawthorn Group clays in this part of Florida take up water and swell, then shrink as they dry, moving the ground beneath a footing without any loss of bearing capacity. Movement of that kind tends to be seasonal and partly reversible rather than progressive, which is a different problem from settlement.
What causes a depression in a parking lot?
Four explanations account for most of them: karst, a utility failure beneath the pavement, buried debris, or fill that was never properly compacted. They look identical from the surface and the remedies are not comparable, so the cause has to be established rather than assumed. That is what a ground depression inspection answers.
Are there sinkholes in Jacksonville?
Rarely. Florida's karst activity concentrates in the west-central counties where limestone sits close to the surface beneath a thin confining layer. Duval County sits on far deeper cover. If a sinkhole is proposed as the cause on a Duval County site, ask to see the borings that establish it before agreeing to grouting.
How is a helical pier's capacity verified?
By torque. A helical pier is a steel shaft with helix plates screwed into the ground until it reaches soil that can carry the load, and installation torque is measured continuously as it advances. Torque correlates to capacity, so each pier is verified as it goes in rather than estimated afterward.
