McQuade
Foundation Services

Foundation · Services in detail

Eight services.
Detailed.

What we do, how we do it, what it costs in time, and what we warranty. Read the service that matches the problem — or read them all if you're trying to figure out which one you have.

Service 01

Helical pier
foundation repair.

Steel piers, screwed deep past the unstable upper soil to load-bearing strata. When the soil beneath your house can't hold the weight, helical piers transfer the load to the soil that can.

The right answer when the failure mode is settlement — cracks in load-bearing walls, doors that have stopped closing square, sloping floors, or a stair-step crack working its way up a block wall. Each pier is hydraulically driven and verified to a torque value that corresponds to a specific load capacity. Once the piers are engaged, brackets attach to the footing and we lift the structure back to where it belongs — within reason and within tolerance, never more than the cosmetic repairs can absorb.

Typical timeline
3 – 5 days
Warranty
25 years transferable
Helical pier installation
Helical engagement Torque-verified to load capacity.
Service 02

Push pier
foundation repair.

Hydraulic-driven steel piers using the weight of the structure itself for installation resistance. Often the right call for heavier homes — brick over stone, masonry construction, full-foundation block walls.

Where helical piers screw in, push piers drive straight down by hydraulic force, with each section of pier engaging the friction of the surrounding soil until it can hold without sinking further. The advantage on heavy structures is that the weight that's causing the settlement is the same weight verifying the engagement. We use push piers most often on Cherokee Triangle Victorians, on Old Louisville brownstones, and on Highlands four-squares — anywhere the house is too heavy for helical to be the most efficient answer.

Typical timeline
4 – 7 days
Warranty
25 years transferable
Push pier installation against masonry foundation
Masonry-grade installation Old Louisville brownstone.
Service 03

Interior basement
waterproofing.

Interior drain tile around the perimeter of the basement floor, sealed to a high-capacity sump system. The standard solution when exterior excavation isn't practical — finished basements, mature landscaping, attached structures.

We saw a channel along the perimeter of the basement floor, install perforated pipe sloped to the sump pit, gravel back the channel, and pour fresh concrete sealed with a vapor membrane. The system pulls water from the footing and walls down to the sump pit before it ever reaches the floor surface. For homes with finished basements, this is usually the only practical waterproofing approach — and done correctly, it's not a compromise. It's a permanent solution.

Typical timeline
5 – 8 days
Warranty
25 years transferable
Interior waterproofing channel
Interior drain tile, day three Sloped to the sump pit.
Service 04

Exterior basement
waterproofing.

Excavation to the footing, full elastomeric membrane on the exterior wall, exterior drain tile at the base, and proper backfill. The most thorough waterproofing approach when the site allows for it.

Exterior waterproofing stops the water on the outside of the wall, before it ever touches the masonry. We excavate down to the footing, pressure-wash the wall, apply a full elastomeric membrane that bonds to the substrate, lay drain tile in clean gravel at the base, and backfill with engineered fill that doesn't retain water against the membrane. It's the right answer for unfinished basements, for new additions, and for properties where the lot grading and landscaping make exterior excavation reasonable.

Typical timeline
7 – 12 days
Warranty
25 years transferable
Exterior foundation work
Membrane application, exterior Day six of nine.
Service 05

Crawlspace
encapsulation.

Vapor barrier on the ground, sealed to insulated walls, with a properly sized dehumidifier. The fix for musty smells upstairs, sagging joists, sweaty ductwork, and the conditioned-space heat loss that comes from a vented crawlspace.

A vented crawlspace in this climate is a system that doesn't work. Humid summer air enters, hits cool surfaces, condenses, and the water has nowhere to go. We seal the crawlspace — heavy mil reinforced vapor barrier on the floor and walls, taped seams, insulated rim joists, and a dehumidifier sized to the actual cubic footage with a condensate pump to the exterior. The crawlspace becomes part of the conditioned envelope of the house. Floors stop being cold. Smells stop being smells. The ductwork stops sweating.

Typical timeline
3 – 5 days
Warranty
20 years transferable
Crawlspace encapsulation in progress
Vapor barrier, sealed Highlands Craftsman, 1922.
Service 06

French drain
& exterior drainage.

Buried perforated pipe in clean gravel, routing surface and subsurface water away from the foundation. Often combined with downspout extensions, surface regrading, and yard grading corrections.

A surprising amount of "basement water" is really surface water that the lot is sending toward the foundation. Sometimes the answer isn't waterproofing — it's drainage. We assess the lot grading, look at where the downspouts terminate, find the low spots that hold water against the house, and design a drainage system that moves water somewhere useful. Done correctly, this is the cheapest fix in our service catalog and the most often overlooked.

Typical timeline
2 – 4 days
Warranty
15 years transferable
French drain installation in progress
Perforated pipe, gravel-packed Crescent Hill exterior drainage.
Service 07

Block and masonry
foundation repair.

Repointing, crack injection, parging, and full block-wall reinforcement. The work that holds the structure together while the rest of the system gets fixed — often done in coordination with piers or waterproofing.

Block walls fail in predictable ways — horizontal cracks at the second course down, stair-step cracks at the corners, mortar joints that turn to sand when you scrape them. We address the failure mode, not the symptom. Cracks get injected with structural epoxy or polyurethane based on whether they're active or static. Mortar gets replaced course by course where it's failed. Walls that have bowed beyond the cosmetic threshold get carbon-fiber reinforcement or, in serious cases, a full structural rebuild. We coordinate with the pier and waterproofing scope so everything happens in the right order.

Typical timeline
2 – 8 days
Warranty
20 years transferable
Masonry repointing work
Repointing, course by course Original mortar, 1898.
Service 08

Sump pump
& battery backup.

Primary cast-iron sump pump with a high-water alarm and a battery backup that runs through a power outage. The last line of defense when everything upstream of the sump pit decides to fail at the same time.

The single most common reason basements flood in this region isn't the foundation — it's a sump pump that quit during the same storm that knocked out the power. We install primary cast-iron sumps that outlast plastic ones by a factor of three, sealed pits that don't off-gas radon into the basement, high-water float alarms that text you when the water rises, and battery backups sized to run the pump for the duration of the longest power outage we've seen this decade. The whole system is designed to fail safe, not loud.

Typical timeline
1 day
Warranty
10 years on pump · 5 years on battery
Sump pump installation
Cast-iron primary with backup Sealed pit, alarmed, wifi-monitored.

The promise

A warranty
that follows the house.

Most of our foundation work carries a 25-year transferable warranty. If you sell the house, the warranty goes with the deed. The next owner can call us, we'll pull the project file, and we'll honor the work — exactly as if you'd never moved.

Plain English. No fine print. No labor-only exclusions. If our work fails inside the warranty window, we come back and fix it. That has been true since the day we started the company, and it will be true in 2051 when the warranty on our first jobs starts to wind down.

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Foundation & Waterproofing

Not sure which
service you need?

That's what the inspection is for. A founder visits, looks at what's there, and tells you exactly which of these services will solve your problem — or whether the problem needs to be solved at all.

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