Saddleback Mission Viejo Concrete lifts hillside homes level on steel piers driven through the fill under the rear wall, the side of a pad that settles. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
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How a lift is done here
A house on a cut and fill pad does not sink evenly. The fill under it is a wedge, shallow near the street and deepest where the pad ends at the top of the rear slope, so the back wall sits on the most made ground and drops the most. The whole house leans a little toward the slope, the rear sliders bind and the patio pulls away. Lifting it means driving piers through that wedge to the ground the pad was cut from and jacking the back wall up first, until the floor reads level again.
Saddleback Mission Viejo Concrete lifts the tract homes Mission Viejo is made of, the 1960s and 1970s houses in Deane Homes, Aegean Hills and Casta del Sol whose pads have had 40 to 60 winters to settle, and the post-tensioned slabs of Pacific Hills and Painted Trails, which tilt as one plate instead of cracking. Trevor Lindqvist shoots the floor himself before the estimate is written and reads the gauges on the lift, after 17 years under houses across south Orange County.
A lift takes a building permit from the City of Mission Viejo, with an engineer's pier layout on the drawing and an inspection at the open pits before backfill. The license is CSLB C-8, held with the California Contractors State License Board, and we carry liability insurance on every job. Your association is told where the patio comes up. Every pier's depth and lift go on the paperwork, with a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Settlement toward the slope
A patio slider that has to be lifted to close is the first thing most owners notice. The back wall has dropped a fraction and the frame has racked out of square, so the panel jams at the head on the low side. Adjusting the rollers hides it for a season and the frame keeps racking.
The patio slab sits on the fill as the house but is not tied to it, so the two drop at different speeds. A threshold that stood flush with the patio when the house was new and now sits a half inch proud of it is one going down faster than the other, and either way the fill moved.
A crack that climbs the stucco in steps from a rear corner, wider at the top than the bottom, is the corner rotating downward and the wall above it opening like a hinge. It follows the stud lines because that is where the wall is weakest. Patching it leaves the corner still dropping.
A crack in the rear yard running parallel to the top of the slope, or a lawn edge slumped a few inches over the crest, means the fill at the pad's edge has begun to move outward as well as down, and that is the ground the back wall bears on. Call this month rather than next year.
In every lift
Every lift carries these eight, and each one answers the pad it is done on, a wedge of fill deepest at the rear wall, a rear yard that ends in a slope, and a patio poured hard against a house that has moved since.
A 3-foot strip of patio is sawn off along the rear wall and broken out, so the footing can be reached without lifting the whole slab.
A level is read across every room before a pit is dug, so the low corner, the tilt toward the slope and the target lift are numbers.
A pit is dug at each pier point to the underside of the footing and the concrete cleaned back, so the bracket seats on sound concrete.
Galvanized steel pier sections are pushed down through the fill wedge until they refuse on the ground the pad was cut from.
The steel bracket that carries the house onto the pier is bolted to the footing, the joint that fails first when it is only wedged.
The sprinkler head, the planter or the flat drain that has been soaking the rear fill is found and fixed, or the house drops again.
Each pit is backfilled in layers and the strip of patio poured back flush, jointed to the old slab, and the yard raked level.
The floor is shot again on the same grid after the lift and both surveys go to you with the pier log and the written guarantee.
Ways to hold it up
Four ways to get a settled house onto ground that has stopped moving, set against how each one is put in, how far down it reaches, how much lift it gives, and the part of a hillside house it suits.
| Option | Driven how | Depth reached | Lift it gives | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steel push piers | Pushed down by the weight of the house | Through the fill until the steel refuses | Back to level in one lift | Perimeter footings, one or two stories |
| Helical piers | Screwed in, torque read every turn | To the torque on the engineer's drawing | Level, and it can be lifted again | Light walls, porches and additions |
| Mass concrete pads | Dug and poured in 3-foot bays | As deep as a hand dig goes, 4 to 6 feet | Stops the drop, lifts little | 1960s footings on shallow fill |
| Interior slab piers | Set through a core in the floor | The same fill the perimeter piers cross | The interior floor back to the walls | A slab dropped in the middle of the house |
Mass concrete costs least and lifts least, push piers cost more and take the whole load, and a slab pier is added only where the floor has dropped inside the walls.
The pad and the slope
The fill under a Mission Viejo pad is deepest at the top of the rear slope, and the houses on it are 40 to 60 years old, so the back wall has had the longest to drop and the furthest to go.
The Mission Viejo Company graded these hills from the mid 1960s by cutting the ridge above each street and pushing the spoil out to make the pad, with the leftover shaped into the slope behind it. That leaves a wedge of fill under every downhill lot, a foot or two thick by the garage and 10 feet or more where the pad ends at the crest, and the rear wall bears on the thick end. Every wet winter puts water into that wedge, and wet fill settles, so the rear footing drops furthest.
The later tracts changed the slab, not the pad. Pacific Hills and Painted Trails went up in the 1980s and 1990s on post-tensioned slabs, steel cables stressed through the concrete, which make the floor one stiff plate. A plate does not crack on the seam between cut and fill as a 1960s slab does. It tilts whole toward the slope, so every door along the back binds at once. A plate is lifted at its edge beam, the cables scanned before we cut the patio back to reach it.
From survey to lock-off
Five stages, and the person who shoots the floor at the first is the one reading the gauges at the fourth. The permit and the engineer's drawing sit between the survey and the first pit, and no pit is dug until both are in hand.
Trevor Lindqvist shoots the floor on a grid, walks the crest and traces where the yard's water goes. The figure is written before he leaves.
The pier points and the target lift go on an engineer's drawing, filed with the City for the building permit and shown to your association.
The patio strip is sawn off and a pit dug by hand at each pier point to the underside of the footing, which is cleaned for the bracket.
Each pier is pushed down until it refuses, then the rear wall is lifted first on every pier at once, a gauge on each, until the floor reads level.
The inspector sees the pits open, the brackets are locked, the pits are backfilled in layers and the patio poured back. The survey is repeated.
Behind the number
The pier count sets the figure and the fill depth finishes it. Two houses with the same crack can need six piers or fourteen once the floor is surveyed, so nothing is quoted from a photo of the stucco. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
The length of rear wall that has dropped sets the pier count, one pier every 6 to 8 feet along it, and the survey says how many feet that is.
An attached unit shares its footing with the neighbor, so the association owns the lift and the drawing covers both units, not one.
A pier under a two-story wall at the crest can go 30 feet before it refuses, and every 3-foot section it takes is steel and a driving hour.
A plate is lifted at its edge beam on the engineer's points, scanned for cables first, and the lift is checked across the whole floor.
The survey and the written figure cost nothing, and the call that books it comes within 1 business day. (657) 390-1824 or send us a message.
Call or send the form, and you hear back within 1 business day with a time for the survey. Trevor Lindqvist shoots the floor, walks the crest and writes the figure at your house, and there is no obligation to go further than that.
Houses we lifted
Left on Google, Facebook and the BBB by owners whose houses we lifted, each naming how far the wall had dropped or how many piers went under it, and none about a slab or a wall.
“Our 1968 house in Aegean Hills had dropped almost 2 inches along the back wall and the slider would not close. They surveyed every room, put eight piers under the rear footing and lifted it in one morning while we watched the gauges. The slider closes with one finger now.”
“Ours is a post-tensioned slab in Pacific Hills and two other contractors would not touch it. Trevor scanned the slab for the cables, had an engineer mark the pier points on the edge beam and lifted the whole plate level. Two winters on, the doors along the back still swing free.”
“The back corner of our Casta del Sol duplex had a stair-step crack a pencil fit in. They worked with the association, put five piers under our end and three under the neighbor's, and found the sprinkler line that had been soaking the fill. The crack closed to a hairline as they lifted.”
Before you book
What moves the figure, how long the house is on jacks, what the City permits, what insurance pays, and what is guaranteed once the brackets are locked, answered for a house on a pad here.
The number of piers and how deep each one goes. The survey says how many feet of wall have dropped, and a pier goes under every 6 to 8 feet of it; the fill wedge says how many sections each pier takes before it refuses, and at the crest that can be three times what it is by the garage. After that it is the patio that has to be cut back and poured again. All of it is measured at the house and written down.
A few hours. The lift itself is one morning, every pier loaded at once with a gauge on each and the wall raised a fraction at a time until the floor reads level. The whole job is five to eight working days on a one-story tract home, two to open the pits, two or three to drive the piers, the lift, then the inspection, backfill and the patio poured back. You live in the house throughout and lose only the rear yard.
Yes. Sawing the strip off along the rear wall, breaking it out, and pouring it back flush and jointed to the old slab once the pits are filled is written into the figure, and so is the engineer's drawing and the permit fee. What sits outside it is named at the survey rather than added later, a sprinkler line that has to be rerouted or a pool deck that reaches the wall. The figure you sign is the figure you pay.
Yes, a building permit from the City of Mission Viejo, because underpinning changes how the house is held up. The application carries an engineer's drawing of the pier points and the target lift, and the inspector sees the pits open with the brackets bolted on before any backfill goes in. Where the rear patio changes, your association is told as well. We file both, and the start date allows for their review.
Rarely. Earth movement and settlement are excluded on the policies written here, and a rear wall that has gone down over 40 winters on fill is the ground doing what fill does. The exception is a sudden covered event, a supply line bursting under the slab and washing the fill out, which is worth a claim. Photograph the cracks and the threshold before anything is cut, and ask your carrier before you book us.
How it was built. Each pier driven to refusal and logged, the bracket bolted to sound concrete, the lift taken to the survey's target and the patio poured back as the estimate says, all under a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built. Ground moving under parts of the house we did not pier, and stucco cracks that opened before the lift, sit outside it. A fault of ours, we come back to fix.
Galvanized steel tube in 3-foot sections, pushed down one after another by a hydraulic ram that uses the weight of the house as its anchor, with a steel bracket bolted under the footing to carry the load onto them. A pier stops when the ground refuses it, which on a pad here is the cut ground below the fill, from 8 feet by the garage to 30 or more at the crest. Every pier's depth and pressure are logged for you.
For the survey at the start, the lift itself and the walk-through at the end. The lift is the morning to be there for, because doors that have stuck for years start to swing as the gauges climb and you will want to see the floor read level. In between, the crew needs the side gate open, water, and the rear yard clear of furniture and pots. Nothing inside the house has to move.
Towns we lift in
Eight towns nearest the office on La Paz Road, each with its straight-line distance. A floor anywhere on the list is surveyed at the house before a figure is written.
Four jobs booked with a foundation lift or straight after it, on the same pad and by the same crew, each written onto the one estimate so the sequence is agreed before the first pit is dug.
A footing poured deeper for an addition, so the new wing bears on the cut and not on the fill.
A new slab for a room addition, poured on probed and compacted ground beside the lifted house.
A wall at the crest to hold the fill the back wall bears on, with a drain behind it.
The patio sawn back from the wall and a slab cored for a pier, without breaking what stays.
You hear back within 1 business day from the form or the call. Tell us which doors stick and whether the yard ends in a slope, and the survey goes on the calendar inside the same week, with the figure written before we leave.