Experts weigh in on home foundation issues in Central Texas

Experts speak on reports of sinking homes

Experts are weighing in after reports of homes sinking in Central Texas, including in Kyle and Buda. 7 On Your Side reporter Angela Shen has the details.

KYLE, Texas - Experts are weighing in after reports of homes sinking in Central Texas, including in Kyle and Buda.

Last month, we spoke to residents in a Kyle neighborhood that is sinking. We heard from many of you who say there are cracks and separation on your homes.

Experts say there are a lot of expansive clays in the soil to the east of I-35. This happens along the boundary of the Edwards Plateau, roughly from Dallas to San Antonio.

Post Oak neighborhood in Kyle is sinking

The Post Oak neighborhood in Kyle is facing road issues, with many houses separating from the ground.

Local perspective:

Saundra Reyes has lived in the Stonefield subdivision in Buda since 2017. This year, she started noticing cracks running down the walls and tiles in her home. Then she noticed it outside her house as well. 

"The front of the house was the worst, so it almost dropped three inches," she said. 

She spent $20,000 getting 16 concrete and steel supports put underneath the home. Workers had to drill several feet down to lift the house.

"Hopefully it won't sink anymore," Reyes said.

Many of her neighbors have similar foundation issues. She wants to raise awareness that it's something to consider when looking at homes. 

"When I first moved in, that was the furthest thing from my mind, having foundation issues. There's no homeowner's insurance or even warranties that cover foundation issues, so if you move out in Buda and Kyle, anywhere out in the Hill Country, it is really something to think about," Reyes said.

What they're saying:

Dan Breecker, a geosciences professor at UT Austin, explains why these foundation problems happen. 

"There are soils that are common in Texas and especially in Central Texas that contain a lot of shrink-swell clays. These clays expand when they get wet, and they shrink when they dry, and that can cause foundations to collapse and infrastructure to degrade," he said.

If you keep the area around the foundation wet, it can prevent shrinking. However, good drainage is important too, because soil that is too wet can get compacted. If shrink-swell clays make up half of soil composition, it creates problems.

"If you can anchor infrastructure in bedrock rather than in the soil, then these shrink-swell problems aren't going to be as bad," Breecker said.

There is a Web Soil Survey tool online, where you can see what kind of soil is in your location.

"The locations where these problems are the worst, they're they are kind of spotty and sporadic. It's not like the entire city is built on these soils," Breecker said.

Knott Laboratory, a forensic engineering company, says most of the time, infrastructure issues are associated with moisture. 

"A structure is kind of light when you inject moisture into these clays, and you can easily lift up a foundation. If you lift that up differently on one side or one corner or something like that, then that's where we start to see distress in buildings," Stanley Stoll, CEO and principal engineer at Knott Laboratory, said.

He says some newer buildings have soil testing done to get the right foundation.

What you can do:

If you start to notice cracks in your home, mark it with a pencil, so you can see if it's getting bigger. That will help when professionals look at it. They'll start by looking at the direction of movement and look at moisture sources.

"The first thing we start with is start simple, control the water around the foundation the best we can. Then after that, if that's not addressing the issues, then we need to start looking at some other potential solutions," Stoll said.

Other solutions include supports to lift the foundation or soil treatments to prevent clay from absorbing moisture. 

If you have foundation issues, Stoll says you can either contact an engineering company or a foundation repair company. Solutions like soil treatments are more likely to be available through engineering companies.