Most foundation work in Sandy Springs happens under a house that has already stood for decades. Suburban building here started in the 1950s, ran through an early-1960s boom after the highways went in, and kept filling in lots through the 1980s. So the job is usually slabs, footings and crawlspace walls that have carried load a long time. We pour new concrete and we repair old concrete, and we tell you which one your house actually needs.
Every job starts with what is holding the house up right now. We dig, look at the footing, check what it is bearing on, and measure how far things have moved before anyone talks about a fix. Permits run through the City of Sandy Springs when the scope calls for one, and we pull them. On rolling, wooded lots, access and drainage often shape the plan as much as the damage does.
Foundations rarely fail on their own. A cracked slab usually traces back to water with nowhere to go, so we look at the driveway, the sidewalk and the grade before blaming the concrete. Being a concrete contractor first matters here: the flatwork around a repair gets poured properly over rebar, whether that is a plain apron, a concrete patio or stamped concrete meant to match what was already there. Call for a free estimate.
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We pour footings and slabs for additions, garages, and rebuilds on houses that have been standing since the early-1960s boom. Forms go up, rebar gets tied on chairs so it sits inside the concrete instead of on the dirt, then we place and screed. Slab thickness and reinforcement depend on what sits above. A concrete contractor who skips the rebar layout is building a crack pattern.
Cracks tell you what is happening underneath. Hairline shrinkage cracks in a slab are cosmetic; stair-step cracking through block, a wall bowing inward, or a corner dropping means movement, and patching the surface hides it for a season. We open the crack, look at what is behind it, then repair with epoxy injection, underpinning, or a rebuilt section depending on the cause.
Poured walls go up in forms with rebar tied vertically and horizontally, then get stripped once the concrete sets. They leak at the cold joint, at tie holes, and at the footing seam more often than through the wall itself. We watch consolidation during the pour, since honeycombing along the bottom is the flaw that shows up as a wet basement floor two winters later.
The footing is the widened base under the wall, cut into undisturbed soil, and it carries everything above it. Width and depth follow the load. Poured on fill or on a wet trench bottom, it settles unevenly, and that shows up upstairs as doors that stick. We dig, inspect the bearing, set rebar, and pour against clean earth.
We pour and repair foundations in Sandy Springs, Georgia, and across the surrounding metro Atlanta suburbs: Atlanta, Dunwoody, Roswell and Brookhaven. Most of what we touch was built decades ago. Suburban development here started in the 1950s, an early-1960s housing boom followed the highways in, and infill kept going through the 1980s. So the work is almost all replacement. The concrete we take out has already carried a house for most of a lifetime, and the house sitting on it is worth doing right.
Age shows itself in particular ways. A slab edge crumbled back to the wire mesh. Footings poured before rebar was standard practice on residential work. Cracks that opened once and stopped, and cracks that are still moving. On rolling, wooded lots the ground under a house is rarely flat, and old flatwork that ignored the grade tends to say so eventually. We read the whole foundation before deciding whether the answer is a patch, a section, or a full tear-out and repour.
Working around a finished house is a different job from pouring on open dirt. There is landscaping, a driveway, a deck, buried utilities and a family living in the middle of it. We plan access before any machine comes up the drive, protect the concrete we are not replacing, and tie new work into old at a clean joint instead of a feathered edge that fails in a season. That is how we run it in every town we cover. Call for a free estimate.
We walk the whole slab, not just the crack you called about. Where does water sit after a storm, how far has the corner settled, is the drop at the door a quarter inch or two. We probe soil at the footing, check downspout runs, and look at the concrete driveway and walks for the same movement. Most houses here were built between the 1950s and the 1980s, so we expect original work.
You get the scope in writing: square footage, slab thickness, reinforcement, finish, and what we haul off. We break out the parts that are optional so you can decide on them separately. Permit paperwork gets filed before anything is broken up. If the work touches sidewalks or the apron at the street, that goes on the estimate too, since it changes the schedule.
Old concrete comes out in pieces and leaves the property. Then the real work starts. We dig to firm ground, cut out soft or organic soil, and bring in graded stone that gets compacted in lifts rather than dumped and raked. Bad base is why driveways crack in the same spot twice. We grade for drainage away from the house before any forms go down.
Forms get set to line and grade, staked tight, and checked with a level rather than by eye. Rebar sits on chairs in the middle third of the slab, tied at the laps, not wire mesh laid on dirt and pulled up during placement. Concrete installation runs continuously once trucks start. We place, screed, and bull float in sequence so no section sets ahead of the rest.
Finish depends on the surface. Broom texture for driveways and exterior walks, since they need grip when wet. Control joints get cut early, before shrinkage picks its own crack line. Then we cure: curing compound or wet cover, and we tell you how long to stay off it, foot traffic first, vehicles later. We walk it with you, point out joint layout, and explain what normal hairline curing looks like.
Price on foundation work follows the site, not a formula. Two houses on the same street can come in far apart because of what sits under the slab and how close a truck can get to it. Most of these you can check yourself before anyone quotes you.
| What changes the price | Which way | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Old slab or footing already in the ground | Costs more | It has to be broken out and hauled off before anything new is poured. |
| How close the truck can park to the pour | Costs less | A short chute run beats wheeling concrete or bringing in a pump. |
| Slab thickness and reinforcement the job calls for | Costs more | Rebar on chairs costs more than wire mesh, and thicker flatwork takes more concrete. |
| Water standing near the foundation after rain | Costs more | Drainage gets corrected first, or the new work sits in the same wet ground. |
| Mature trees close to the work | Costs more | Roots have to be cut back or worked around, and that is hand labor. |
| Slope across the pour area | Costs more | A rolling lot needs forming, fill and compaction to hold a level plane. |
| Unknowns under a house from the early-1960s boom | Costs more | Buried lines and undocumented earlier repairs turn up once the ground is open. |
Comparing bids, look past the total. Ask each contractor what thickness they are pouring, what reinforcement goes in, whether demolition and haul-off are included, and what happens if they open the ground and find something unexpected. Bids that differ widely usually differ on those four answers.
Usually yes on both counts, though it depends on the scope. Structural work that changes how a house carries load gets reviewed, and a stamped letter from a structural engineer is what the reviewer wants to see. Small cosmetic patching is a different matter. We tell you which category your job falls into before we start, and we handle the paperwork ourselves rather than leaving it with you.
Concrete reaches most of its strength in the first month, but framing does not have to wait that long. Forms usually come off within a few days, and framers can typically start about a week after the pour, depending on temperature and the mix we used. Cold weather slows everything down. We keep the slab wet or covered through the early days, because curing conditions matter more than the calendar.
Yes. The ground here is rolling and wooded, so level lots are the exception rather than the rule. A slope means stepped footings, retaining work, or a deeper stem wall on the downhill side, plus real attention to where water goes once the house sits there. None of that is unusual. It adds excavation and forming time, and it changes the drainage plan, so we work that out early.
An unrepaired foundation problem shows up in an inspection and follows the house through closing. Repaired properly, with documentation of what was done and an engineer's sign-off where one was required, it stops being a negotiating point. Median home value here runs $732,100, so an inspection finding is not a small line item. Keep the paperwork. Buyers and their agents will ask for it.
Width, direction and movement. Curing cracks are hairline, wander, and stay put once the concrete has finished shrinking. Settlement cracks run diagonally from corners of openings, get wider at one end, and keep growing. Doors that stick, gaps at trim, and a floor that slopes toward one wall point the same way. We measure a crack and come back to it before calling it.
The housing stock explains most of it. Development started in the 1950s, boomed in the early 1960s after the highways went in, and filled in through the 1980s, so a lot of these foundations have been under load for decades. We see settled corners, cracked slabs, crawlspace piers that have shifted, and drainage that stopped working years ago. Most of our work is replacement, not new build.