A capital city on the Arkansas River
Little Rock is the capital and the most populous city of Arkansas, and it is the county seat of Pulaski County. It was incorporated on November 7, 1831, on the south bank of the Arkansas River, close to the state's geographic center.
Humidity hours recorded at Little Rock AFB
The NOAA engineering weather station named on this page is Little Rock AFB at Jacksonville, about 17 miles northeast of downtown Little Rock. In an average year at Little Rock AFB, about 17 miles northeast of downtown, NOAA counts about 1,378 hours with the wet-bulb temperature above 73°F and about 2,739 hours above 67°F. Those are counts for the air base station, not measurements taken in Little Rock or under your house.
Read the house before you call anyone
A foundation that has moved tends to leave a trail of small clues, and each one alone is easy to explain away. Gather them in one place. Go through the house room by room with a notebook and your phone camera, and look for:
- a door whose top gap runs from tight on one side to wide on the other;
- a door that drifts open or closed with nobody touching it;
- diagonal cracks running from the corners of door and window frames;
- drywall tape loosening at a ceiling joint, or a gap between wall and ceiling;
- a crack crossing several floor tiles in a straight line;
- cabinets, counters or baseboards separating from a wall;
- a floor you can feel slope as you walk.
Fine cracks in paint and plaster turn up in many houses. What makes one worth attention is its width, its direction and whether it is growing.
Then walk the outside
Circle the house slowly. Check brick and siding at the corners for stair-step cracks through the mortar, the joint between the main slab and a porch or patio, the garage slab, and the line where a driveway meets the garage. A stoop that now sits below the door threshold, a chimney leaning away from the wall or a widening gap between the slab edge and the soil is worth a dated photo.
Track change, not just cracks
A single look tells you very little. Change over time tells you a lot. For each crack you care about, draw a short pencil line across both ends and write the date. Photograph it with a coin or tape measure in the frame, from a spot you can find again. Every couple of weeks, look again and note whether it has passed your marks. Keep a separate list of doors that stick and the date each one started.
Wood swells and shrinks with moisture in the air, so a door that binds evenly along one edge in some weeks and works freely in others may be the wood moving rather than the frame. A wedge-shaped gap is the more telling sign.
Water around and under the slab
Water that soaks one side of a house more than another can leave the soil supporting a foundation unevenly. Much of what you can control is about where water goes:
- Gutters and downspouts. Keep them clean, firmly attached and discharging well away from the walls.
- Grading. The ground should fall away from the house on every side. Rebuild any trough that has formed along the foundation.
- Beds and irrigation. Keep sprinkler heads aimed away from the slab, and look for beds that trap water against the wall.
- Hidden leaks. A leaking supply or drain line under a slab puts water where you can't see it. If the water bill rises with no explanation, or the meter turns with every fixture shut, have a plumber test the lines before foundation work is scheduled.
What the soil under your particular lot does when wet or dry is something to ask the evaluator directly; it can't be judged from a distance.
Get an opinion with nothing to sell
A company that installs piers has a reason to recommend piers. For anything past cosmetic cracking, consider paying a structural engineer who does not sell repairs for a written evaluation. Bring your notebook and photos. Ask:
- Is the movement still happening, or did it stop years ago?
- What is causing it: water, a leak, the soil, how the house was built, or several of these?
- What needs repair now, what should only be watched, and for how long?
How repairs differ
Not every foundation problem calls for underpinning. At the light end, a fix is drainage correction, crack sealing and monitoring. A section of slab that has dropped may be raised with injected polyurethane foam or cement grout. Footings that keep settling may be underpinned with steel or concrete piers pushed, driven or screwed down to firmer bearing. Walls that bow can be braced or anchored. Ask each company why it picked its method, how many piers or injection points it proposes and where, how deep it expects them to go and what it expects to happen to the cracks you already have.
Questions for the contract
Before you sign, find out which city permits the repair requires and who files for them, and whether an engineer will review the finished work. Ask for proof of liability coverage and workers' compensation. The written contract should name the method, the count and location of piers or injection points, any drainage work, plumbing tests, cleanup and yard restoration, the payment schedule and the warranty, including whether it transfers to a future buyer.