13x Greater Support with Bell Bottom Piers

Support, support, support.  That’s what it is all about.  The clay soils under your home’s slab foundation have moved, shifted, swollen, shrunk, or some combination of these events.  In short, the dirt under your foundation is not providing the proper or necessary support and if that is the case then the soil has probably fractured your concrete slab in one or more places. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some stable, solid support under your home’s foundation?

What do you think of the photo above? We are comparing the area of support of a commonly used concrete pile versus the area of support of a Bell Bottom Pier.  The 6 inch diameter concrete pile only offers 28.3 square inches of area/support while the 22 inch diameter Bell Bottom Pier offers 380 square inches of area/support.  The difference is by a factor of 13 – that is, one is 13 times greater than the other.  Or to state it another way, a pushed pile offers less than 8% of the support area of a Bell Bottom Pier. Isn’t it obvious which one of the two will offer greater support for your home’s concrete foundation?

Let’s look at it a different way.  Let’s assume your home needs 10 support structures (piles or piers) to support an area of settlement around the front and side perimeter foundation beam. So how much support does each method offer?

10 pushed piles x 28.3 sq inches = 283 total square inches of support
10 Bell Bottom Piers x 380 sq inches = 3800 total square inches of support

Not. Even. Close.

The Bell Bottom Pier is the Highest Quality foundation repair method available in the state of Texas. We only offer this method of construction because we strongly feel that the homeowner should receive a proven and permanent repair solution.  Other low quality repair methods have inherent flaws that lead to frequent failure.

We frequently tell homeowners that they get what they pay for.  If they pay a low price for foundation repair they are going to receive a low quality repair effort. Here are the basic formulas:

Low Quality Foundation Repair = minimal support + segmented concrete piles + low price

Highest Quality Foundation Repair = 13x more support + monolithic construction (one unit) + higher price

So what do you want for your home, a low quality job or the highest quality available? View the image below.