Raising a house means jacking it clear of what it stands on, so the concrete under it can be rebuilt or its level put right. Riverside Concrete Pro pours what it comes down onto.
5.0 Stars Rated by our customers · Google, Facebook and the BBB
Two license classes, one job
This is the one job on our list where the building itself moves. Steel beams are run through the cripple wall, timber cribbing is stacked under them, and the house comes up as one piece so nothing in it is asked to bend. It is booked for three reasons: a floor has gone out of level, the concrete under the house has failed and cannot be repaired in place, or the finished floor has to end up higher. All three end with the building set down on concrete that was not there before.
Marco Delgado goes into the crawl space himself before any figure is written, because the footing you can reach from the vent is not the footing forty feet in. Riverside Concrete Pro has been his since 2021, and the 15 years before it were on crews across this end of the Inland Empire. What the visit settles is whether the ground moved or the concrete broke: ground still moving needs support taken deeper, while a snapped footing over sound ground needs replacing and nothing more.
Lifting is not our license class and we do not pretend it is. California defines the C-21 building moving contractor as the one who raises, lowers, cribs and underpins structures including their foundations, and puts everything permanently retained outside that class in the same sentence. So a named C-21 stands at the jacks, and we do what a CSLB C-8 holder does: place and finish the concrete the house lands on, to a structural engineer's stamped detail.
When a house has moved
Take a light into the crawl space and drag a screwdriver along the perimeter footing. Much of what was poured in this city before 1940 was batched by eye on the lot, and it gives up sand under a blade. A footing that will not hold a drill bit will not hold an anchor either.
Sight along the top of the footing where the timber sits on it. Where the sill overhangs by half an inch in one bay and sits flush twenty feet along, the concrete has rotated outward rather than dropped straight down. That is bending in a strip with no steel in it.
Front porches and their steps on the old streets here stand on their own brick piers, founded shallower than the house beside them. A gap at the junction that opens through a wet January and shuts again by August means the two are on different ground.
Foundation vents that once stood clear of the flower bed and now sit at soil level are the reading nobody takes. Section R304.1 wants durable or treated timber wherever joists come within 18 inches of exposed ground, and a 1920s floor is neither of those.
On every lift
Eight items on the estimate before the first jack goes under, listed in the order the job runs. The survey is first for a reason: how far out of level a house is, and where, is the number every later decision on this page is taken from.
Levels shot room to room off a benchmark outside the building, so the drop is a mapped figure rather than a slope somebody felt underfoot.
Footing, mudsill, posts and girders photographed and probed along their length, because failure here is nearly always local rather than general.
The new foundation, the support it bears on and the lift sequence come off a stamped drawing. We build to it and never around it.
The moving contractor is named on your estimate with the class held, so you can look both of us up on the state register before signing.
Gas capped at the meter, water and drains cut and given slack, electrical fed on a temporary run. A pipe is what tears when a house rises.
Jacks driven together off a single manifold and read at every point, so the building travels as one plane instead of in corners.
Sill bolts cast into the new concrete rather than drilled afterward, half an inch across and never further apart than 6 feet.
The house stays on cribbing until the concrete reaches the strength named on the drawing, then comes down, gets bolted and is signed off.
Four different jobs, one phrase
People ring about all four of these using the same two words, and they are not variations of one job. What separates them is whether the building leaves the ground, how long it spends on temporary support, and which license class stands there when it does.
| Option | What it answers | Does it lift | On temporary support | License on the lift |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lift and re-found | A perimeter foundation past any repair | Whole house, on one manifold | Weeks, until the new concrete is cured | C-21 lifts, C-8 pours, engineer stamps |
| Underpin in place | Movement deeper than a footing reaches | No, load shifts onto piers where it stands | None, the house never leaves its footing | C-21 underpins to the engineer's detail |
| Replace in sections | One failed run under a sound house | Locally, on needles through the cripple wall | Days per section, one section at a time | C-21 needles it, C-8 pours the run |
| Raise for height | Headroom, a floor level, a flood height | Yes, and it stays at the new height | Weeks, taller stem walls take longer | C-21 lifts, engineer sizes the taller stem wall |
Which row you are in is decided by the survey and the engineer, not at the door. A house on ground that is still moving is not fixed by a new footing at the old depth.
Riverside ground
This service exists for houses that sit over a crawl space on a strip of plain concrete, and Riverside has more of them than any town we cover.
The city has been laid out, trenched and built over since 1870, and its pre-1940 stock is framed over a raised wood floor on a narrow perimeter footing poured without a bar in it. Plain concrete is strong in compression and close to useless in bending, so when a century of mains, laterals and trenches leaves a soft length under one wall, that footing does not settle gently across its span. It cracks at the soft spot and hinges there, which is why the drop is usually one room deep.
Then there is a counter our other pages never reach. Raising a house changes its height above grade, and that is an exterior alteration: on a contributing structure in one of the city's historic districts, Mt. Rubidoux, North Hill and Palm Heights among them, or in a Neighborhood Conservation Area, a Certificate of Appropriateness has to be issued before Building & Safety will act, and that one is Planning's under Title 20. Which of those a property sits in gets checked at the survey.
How a lift runs
Five stages, and concrete does not appear until the fourth. Nothing goes under the building before the drop has been mapped, an engineer has drawn what replaces the foundation, and the permit is in hand.
Somebody rings you back within 1 business day to book it. Levels are shot off an outside benchmark and the crawl space is walked end to end.
An engineer sizes the new foundation and the lift sequence to the survey and the soils work, and the stamped set goes in for plan check.
Gas is capped, water and drains are cut with slack left, beams go through the cripple wall and cribbing is stacked under them.
Jacks come up together to the mapped figure, the old concrete is broken out, steel is tied and the open trench is shown to the inspector.
Once the pour has cured the house is lowered onto it, bolted to the new sill line, plumbing and gas are remade and backfill goes in.
What sets the figure
The length of foundation being replaced sets the floor. Everything above that is the work that has to happen before a jack can go under the building at all, and none of the four below can be read off a photograph.
An inch of fall across one room and an inch across the whole footprint are the same reading and two different jobs underneath.
Where the soils work sends the load below anything a footing reaches, deep support is drawn instead, and that is priced as its own line.
Copper and ABS take a lift with slack left in them. Galvanized steel and clay drain lines of the same age are usually renewed rather than moved.
A house standing 4 feet off the side line leaves no working width, so beams come in through the crawl space and the day count goes up.
No figure is written off a description. Send the form, somebody calls to book the survey within 1 business day, and the estimate is left at the property. (951) 584-0685 or send us a message.
Fill in the form and the survey gets booked when somebody rings you within 1 business day. We map the fall, go under the house with a light, and say which of the four jobs above yours is, with the written figure left at the property.
Reviews
Three reviews of work under a standing building, left on Google, Facebook and the BBB. None of these is flatwork: in every one of them the house was on temporary support while the concrete went in.
“The back bedroom of our 1924 place had dropped and I had been told for years to live with it. They shot the levels, found the footing broken over an old sewer trench and replaced 22 feet of it with the corner up on cribbing. The doors have shut on their own since.”
“We wanted the whole house up 14 inches to get a garage under it. Marco brought the moving contractor to the survey rather than after we had signed, and the two of them walked us through who did what. Nine weeks, and it came down on the new stem walls dead level.”
“Ours turned out not to need lifting at all. The engineer read the soils work and called for piers, so the house never left the ground and the bill was smaller than the one I had been carrying around. Being told that by the people who would have done the lift meant something.”
FAQ
What gets settled before this work is booked: who is licensed to do which half of it, what a moving building does to the finishes inside, how long a house sits on cribbing, and who has to see it.
No, and anyone answering yes off a C-8 is worth checking. The concrete classification covers forming, placing and finishing concrete work, which is the new foundation. Raising, cribbing and underpinning a structure is the C-21 building moving classification, in those words. We bring a C-21 in, name them on your estimate with the class held, and both licenses are open to look up on the state register.
Some of it cracks, and an estimate that promises otherwise is not honest. A house lifted evenly moves as one plane and mostly survives, but brittle finishes go first at their weakest lines: plaster at door and window corners, grout in a tiled bathroom, stucco at the base of the wall. Bringing a floor back to level reopens old cracks as often as it makes new ones. Plan on patching over the work.
By what is under the house, which is why soils work comes before the drawing. Where the ground still has bearing and the concrete is what failed, the answer is new concrete at a depth the engineer sets. Where movement runs deeper than any footing reaches, the load is carried down to bearing on piers and the house never leaves the ground. Whoever stamps the sheet makes that call, not the crew who would do it.
For a full lift, yes, and for a length of foundation replaced under one wall, usually not. Once the gas is capped and the drains are cut the building is not habitable, so a whole-house raise is planned around somewhere else to sleep. Sectional work keeps the services live and the rooms usable, which is one of the reasons the survey matters: it decides which of the two you are looking at.
They come off before anything rises and are remade at the end. Gas is capped at the meter by the utility, the water service is cut with slack left in it, and the drain is cut at a joint below the floor. Anything old and brittle gets renewed rather than lifted: a galvanized supply or a clay lateral of the same age as the house will not take being moved 8 inches and put back.
As long as the concrete takes, and that is on the drawing rather than in our diary. The old foundation comes out, the trench is dug and steel is tied while the building is held, and none of it is loaded again until the engineer's strength is reached. On a full perimeter replacement that is typically several weeks from the day the jacks go under to the day the house is bolted down and the cribbing is pulled.
A building permit, always, because a foundation is structural and no exemption in the code reaches one. The stamped set goes to Building & Safety, and R109.1.1 has the trench inspected before concrete: after excavation, forms up, reinforcing in place and supported. If the property is a cultural resource, or sits in a historic district or Conservation Area, Planning issues a Certificate of Appropriateness first.
Yes, on paper, and it arrives with the card the inspector signed. The concrete half of the job carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built, covering the excavation, the steel, the anchorage and the level the house was set down at. The lift is warranted by the moving contractor, on their own paper. Soil that shifts beyond what the drawing allowed for is outside both.
Service area
Eight towns here, closest first, with the miles from Riverside beside each. Twenty of them across 2 counties are covered in all, and a house up on cribbing is inspected by whichever building department its address falls under.
Four jobs that follow a lift onto the same estimate more often than not, because a building set down at a new height no longer meets the concrete that was poured around it.
Pads and pier caps where the engineer takes the load below the perimeter line.
Front steps rebuilt to a porch that is now sitting higher than it was.
Holding the ground back where a new stem wall stands proud on a falling lot.
The slab for the space underneath, once there is headroom to use it.
Say what the floor is doing and when it started. Somebody comes out, maps the fall across it and takes a light under the house. Nothing is charged for that survey or for the figure that follows, and an answer of piers rather than a lift is given on the day.