Fort Worth Multifamily Foundation Repair: 123 Hybrid Piers Beneath an Occupied Apartment Community

01 · The Problem

The call started the way most of them do: cracks in the brick.

The owners of a 16-building apartment community on S Hulen Street in Fort Worth had been watching cracks open across the exterior walls of several buildings, and asked FCS Foundation Repair and Concrete Services to inspect the property — all of it.

Our Structural Analyst began outside, walking every one of the sixteen buildings to identify which showed serious signs of foundation movement and which needed a closer look. The exterior survey found the usual suspects and then some: cracked brick, separation at doors and windows, erosion around building perimeters, and poor drainage — including a pond that had formed behind one of the buildings.

02 · Sixteen Buildings, Measured One at a Time

Once the owners granted interior access, the real diagnostic work started.

Inside each unit, we measured the foundation with a ZipLevel elevation survey — a room-by-room elevation map that shows exactly where a slab is sinking or heaving, not just that it’s moving. Alongside the measurements came a visual inspection of every unit: cracked drywall, uneven doors, damaged tile, and the other fingerprints foundation movement leaves indoors.

Then back outside, checking each building’s perimeter against what the interior numbers said.

The measurements told a clear story: several buildings were outside acceptable foundation tolerances, and the plumbing and drainage problems the crews had spotted meant the movement wouldn’t stop on its own. Left alone, the buildings would keep moving — which means a bigger lift later, more interior piers, more disruption, and a larger repair bill for the owners down the road.

03 · Good, Better, Best

FCS doesn’t hand a commercial owner a single take-it-or-leave-it repair plan.

The owners received good, better, and best options, each explained with what they could expect after the work was done. We put our emphasis on the better and best plans, because those were the ones built for long-term success rather than a short-term patch. The owners chose the middle option: hybrid piers, engineered to reach depths the soil movement couldn’t touch.

The scope: 123 hybrid piers beneath Buildings 5, 6, and 7 — 42, 38, and 43 piers respectively — driven 11 to 14 feet to the point of refusal.

04 · The Repair, Hole by Hole

Before a shovel touched dirt, the Project Manager walked each building and marked every pier location with blue painter’s tape. The crews followed behind with protection: tarps across the grounds outside, plastic sheeting taped to walls and heavy-duty paper across floors inside. Bushes in the way were dug up and set aside to be replanted.

Excavation was done by hand — shovels and wheelbarrows, with every load of dirt landing on a tarp or in a barrow, never on a resident’s lawn or floor.

At each access hole, the crew assembled the pier in place, then used a hydraulic press — driven by the weight of the building itself — to push it down to bedrock or refusal, whichever came first. Refusal typically arrives between 7,000 and 10,000 psi.

The foundation crews also worked as a second set of eyes for our plumbing team, logging every potential plumbing issue they encountered underground. When our plumber ran post-repair testing, he already knew where to look.

05 · Cleanup Was Planned Before the Dig

Cleanup on an occupied property isn’t a phase that starts when the work ends — it’s decided by how carefully the site was prepped at the start. Because every load of excavated dirt was already on tarps or in barrows, backfilling meant returning the same soil to the same holes and compacting it to prevent settling. Plastic came off the walls, paper came off the floors, and the bushes went back where they’d been.

The Project Manager then did a final walk-through with the owner — not to announce the job was done, but to confirm the owner agreed it was.

06 · Showing the Owner, Then Proving It

The final walk-through was a before-and-after tour: brick cracks that had closed as the buildings lifted, and re-graded soil around the perimeters restoring the drainage slope that erosion had taken away.

We also took fresh elevation measurements with the owner present, so the difference wasn’t a claim — it was a number they watched us read.

Then a third-party structural engineer inspected the project and independently verified the work.