Cost guide · 2026

Slab foundation repair cost

Nearly every house built in Texas since the 1960s sits on a concrete slab, so this is the repair most homeowners here end up pricing. The good news is that it is a well-understood, competitively priced job. The variable that decides your number is not the concrete — it is how many support points the slab needs and how hard they are to reach.

What you are likely to pay

$300–$600 Per concrete pressed piling
$4k–$11k Typical perimeter job, 8–20 points
$20k–$35k With interior piers and tunneling
About these figures

Foundation Repair IQ does not quote prices and does not perform repairs. The figures below are general industry ranges published for orientation only — not quotes, not estimates for your property, and not binding on any contractor. Foundation pricing is set by the contractor after an on-site evaluation, and your actual cost may fall outside any range shown here.

Scope General range What it usually involves
Seal a non-structural crack $300 – $900 Epoxy or polyurethane injection, one crack
One settling corner $1,800 – $4,500 Roughly 4–8 pilings, exterior access
One full elevation $4,000 – $8,500 10–16 pilings along one side
Full perimeter $8,000 – $16,000 20–30 pilings around the house
Perimeter plus interior piers $18,000 – $35,000 Adds tunneling or through-slab access
Lift sunken flatwork $5 – $25 per sq ft Mudjacking or foam, driveways and patios

General industry ranges weighted to the Texas market. They are not quotes — pricing is set by the contractor after an on-site evaluation.

Why the method matters to the price

The method is chosen for the soil and the load, not for the invoice, but the choice has a large effect on the total.

Four foundation support methods in cross-section Cross-sections comparing a concrete pressed piling made of stacked segments, a steel push pier driven as a pipe, a helical pier with screw plates along its shaft, and a wide drilled pier bored down to rock. foundation beam foundation beam foundation beam foundation beam Concrete pressed piling pressed with the house as the reaction force Steel push pier driven through the clay to load-bearing strata Helical pier screwed in; torque readings give capacity on install Drilled pier bored and poured where rock sits close to the surface Strata active clay stiff clay load-bearing strata / rock
The method is chosen for the soil profile and the load the pier has to carry, not arbitrarily — which is why two contractors can propose different systems for the same house. It is a fair question to ask any contractor why the method they have proposed is the right one for your soil.

Concrete pressed pilings ($300–$600 each) are the Texas default on slab perimeters. Cylindrical concrete segments are hydraulically pressed into the ground using the weight of the house as the reaction force, stacked until they meet resistance. Fast, cheap, and well-suited to deep uniform clay.

Steel pressed pilings ($700–$1,200) work the same way with steel pipe, which can be driven deeper and carry more load — used where the clay runs deep or the house is heavy.

Steel push piers ($1,200–$1,900) are driven to genuine load-bearing strata and then the load is transferred to them, which makes the support independent of the movement in the clay above. More expensive, more definitive.

Helical piers ($1,400–$2,500) are screwed into the ground with a torque motor rather than driven. Useful where there is not enough structural weight to press against, in tight access, and where torque readings give a measurable capacity at installation.

Drilled piers ($1,000–$2,800) are used where rock is shallow — west Austin, north San Antonio, west Tarrant County. Slower and more equipment-dependent than pressing pilings into clay.

You will also hear all of these called slab piers when they are installed under a slab foundation rather than under a beam or a footing. It is a description of where the pier goes, not a separate product — so if one estimate says "slab piers" and another says "pressed pilings", ask which of the methods above each one actually means before you compare the numbers.

The interior pier problem

If there is one thing to understand about slab repair budgets, it is this. A perimeter support point is installed from outside with a machine. An interior support point has a house sitting on top of where it needs to go, and reaching it costs more than the pier does.

Three ways a contractor reaches a support point Three cross-sections of a house on a slab. The first shows a pier installed from outside at the perimeter. The second shows an interior pier reached by cutting through the slab from inside the house. The third shows an interior pier reached by hand-digging a tunnel underneath the slab from outside. Route 1 Perimeter Dig outside, press, backfill Machine access. Fastest and cheapest per support point. Route 2 Through the slab Cut a hole in the floor Flooring out, concrete cut, patch after. Post-tension cables must be located first. Route 3 Tunnel underneath hand-dug Dig in from outside, under the slab Interior untouched, but priced per linear foot of tunnel before any pier goes in.
A support point on the perimeter and the same support point in the middle of the house cost very different amounts, because of what it takes to reach it. This is the single biggest reason two quotes for one house can differ by a multiple — check whether both include interior work before comparing the totals.

Through the slab means removing flooring, cutting a hole in the concrete, doing the work through it, and patching — plus your flooring, which is rarely in the foundation quote. On a post-tension slab it also means scanning to locate the tendons before any cutting.

Tunneling means hand-digging an access tunnel under the slab from outside, at $150 to $250 per linear foot. Your interior is untouched, which is why most homeowners choose it, but a thirty-foot tunnel is $4,500 to $7,500 before a single pier is installed.

This is why an estimate that includes interior work can be three times one that does not, for the same house. When you are comparing quotes, the first question is whether they both include interior support — because if one does and one does not, you are not comparing prices, you are comparing plans.

Post-tension slabs

If your Texas home was built from roughly the late 1970s onward, assume it has a post-tension slab: steel tendons tensioned after the pour, running through the concrete. They are more resilient than conventionally reinforced slabs, and they make any through-slab work a scanning exercise first. Ask any contractor how they plan to locate the cables. A contractor who does not raise it unprompted is worth asking twice.

Before you price the repair, price the plumbing test

A leaking supply or sewer line under a slab saturates the soil beneath it and can cause movement all on its own. Underpinning a house without finding the leak means paying for the structural work and then watching the same thing happen again.

A hydrostatic plumbing test costs $250 to $600 and either rules a leak out or finds one. If it finds one, two things change: the repair plan, and possibly who pays, because sudden plumbing leaks are a covered peril under more Texas homeowners policies than soil movement is. It is the cheapest high-value step in the whole process and it belongs at the start.

What is usually not in the quote

  • Cosmetic repair. Lifting a slab closes some cracks and opens others. Drywall, paint, brick tuckpointing, door adjustment — budget $1,000 to $5,000 and expect it to be excluded.
  • Flooring. If interior piers go through the slab, whatever is on top of it comes up first and does not go back down for free.
  • Landscaping and irrigation lines in the exterior work zone.
  • The independent engineer's report, $400 to $1,000, if you want a second opinion from someone with no repair to sell.
  • Drainage correction, which is frequently the thing that stops it recurring and is frequently quoted separately.
These are estimates, not quotes

Every figure on this page is a planning range. Real pricing depends on your soil profile, depth to stable bearing, access, and how many support points a measured survey shows your house needs — none of which can be assessed from a web page. Use these numbers to sanity-check an estimate, not to hold a contractor to one.

Slab repair cost questions

How much does it cost to repair a slab foundation?

A typical slab repair in Texas runs somewhere between $4,000 and $11,000, which usually buys a perimeter job of 8 to 20 concrete pressed pilings. Smaller jobs are common — a few pilings under one settling corner can come in under $3,000. Larger ones are too: once interior piers, tunneling, drainage and a root barrier are in the plan, $20,000 to $35,000 is realistic. The number tracks the number of support points and how hard they are to reach more than anything else.

Why do interior piers cost so much more than perimeter piers?

Because of access, not the pier. A perimeter pier is installed from outside: excavate beside the beam, press the piling, lift, backfill. An interior pier has a house sitting on top of where it needs to go. There are two ways to reach it. Break through the slab from inside, which means removing flooring, cutting concrete, doing the work through the hole and patching it — and on a post-tension slab, locating the tendons first so none is cut. Or tunnel under the house from outside at $150 to $250 per linear foot, which keeps the interior intact but adds days of hand-digging. Either route can double the cost of a support point that costs $400 on the perimeter.

Does a post-tension slab cost more to repair?

Not inherently, but it constrains the method. Post-tension slabs have steel tendons under high tension running through them, and cutting one is dangerous, expensive, and can compromise the slab. Any work that cores or breaks the slab needs those tendons located first — typically with a scanner, sometimes from the original tendon layout drawings if they exist. In practice this pushes contractors toward perimeter work and tunneling rather than through-slab access, and adds a scanning step. If your house was built in Texas from roughly the late 1970s onward, assume post-tension unless you know otherwise, and ask any contractor how they intend to locate the cables.

How many piers will my house need?

There is no rule of thumb that survives contact with an actual house, which is why any number quoted before an elevation survey is a guess. That said, the shape of the answer is usually driven by how much of the perimeter has dropped and how far. A single settling corner might need 4 to 8 support points. One full elevation of a typical single-story home commonly runs 10 to 16. A house that has moved on two or three sides, or a two-story with heavier loads, can need 25 or more. The design should come from measured floor elevations across the whole slab, not from where the visible cracks are.

Can a cracked slab be repaired without piers?

Often, yes — if the crack is not a symptom of movement. Concrete shrinks as it cures, and shrinkage cracks in a slab are extremely common and usually harmless. Where a crack is not opening progressively and the floor elevations are within tolerance, sealing it with epoxy or polyurethane injection at $300 to $900 per crack is a complete repair rather than a patch. The distinction between a crack that needs sealing and a crack that is reporting settlement is exactly what an elevation survey establishes, and it is the reason to get one before agreeing to anything expensive.

What is slab jacking, and is it cheaper than piering?

Different job. Slab jacking — mudjacking with a cement slurry, or polyurethane foam injection — lifts a sunken slab by pumping material underneath it to fill the void. It is priced by area, roughly $5 to $15 per square foot for mudjacking and $8 to $25 for foam, and it is excellent for sunken flatwork: driveways, patios, walkways, garage slabs. What it does not do is provide new structural support. If the soil under a house has lost capacity, filling the void does not stop it happening again. For a settled house foundation, piering addresses the cause and slab jacking addresses the symptom — which is why they are not really alternatives.

Related: full foundation repair cost guide · pier and beam repair cost · foundation repair in Texas

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