Pier Repair and Replacement for Mobile Homes in Polk County

What a pier is made of and how it fails

A typical pier is a stack: a footing pad bearing on soil, concrete block or a steel stand above it, then hardwood or composite shims wedged tight against the steel frame. Each part has its own failure mode, and the fix depends on which part gave way.

• Footing pad too small for the soil, so the load slowly presses the pad down into sandy loam.
• Pad set on fill, on topsoil, or on ground that was never compacted when the home was placed.
• Erosion or washout that removes soil from under or beside the pad after heavy rain.
• Block stacks that lean out of plumb, so load runs through an edge instead of the full block.
• Cracked, spalled or crumbling block, common in older homes and in constantly damp crawl spaces.
• Shims that compressed, rotted, split or fell out, leaving a pier standing but carrying nothing.
• Piers spaced too far apart for the frame span, so the remaining piers carry more than intended.

The loose pier problem

The most common finding under an older home around Livingston is not a collapsed pier. It is a pier that still looks fine but no longer touches. Ground under it settled a fraction of an inch at a time, the shims stayed where they were, and now there is daylight at the top of the stack. The load that pier was supposed to carry moved to its neighbors, and the frame flexes to make up the difference. Multiply that by a handful of piers and the floor above starts to slope.

Repair versus replacement

When a repair is enough

If the block stack is sound and plumb, the pad is intact and bearing on firm ground, and the only issue is lost contact, the correction can be a lift and reshim. That is the cheapest category of work in terms of labor, and it is why catching movement early matters.

When a pier gets rebuilt

A leaning stack, cracked block, or a pad that has pressed into the soil means the pier comes apart and goes back together. That usually involves excavating to firm bearing, setting a larger or new pad, restacking block plumb and square, and reshimming tight to the frame. On lots with persistently wet soil, contractors often increase the bearing area so the same load spreads over more ground.

When piers get added

Older placements sometimes used wider pier spacing than current practice, or a home has been added to with a porch, a room addition or a heavy appliance load. Adding piers between existing ones reduces the span each one carries and can stop repeat movement that reshimming alone never resolves.

Local conditions that shorten pier life

Around Lake Livingston, a seasonally high water table means a footing can be bearing on soft, saturated soil for part of the year and firmer soil the rest of it. That cycling is hard on small pads. Sandy loam also moves when water moves through it, so a downspout, a roof valley that dumps to one corner, or a driveway that channels runoff toward the home can undercut a specific pier while the rest of the home is fine.

Heavy tree cover contributes in two ways. Shade keeps the crawl space damp, which shortens the life of wood shims and accelerates block deterioration. Large root systems draw moisture unevenly, so one side of the home sits on drier, shrinking soil while the other side stays damp.

What an inspection looks at

1. Contact at every pier: whether the shims are actually tight to the frame.
2. Plumb of each block stack and condition of the block itself.
3. Pad size, pad condition, and how far the pad has pressed into the soil.
4. Standing water, damp soil, erosion channels and signs of past washout.
5. Vapor barrier condition and crawl space drainage.
6. Frame condition where piers bear, including rust at the bottom flange.
7. Anchor and tie down tension, since pier changes affect strap tension.

Requesting a local contractor

This site connects Polk County homeowners with independent contractors who do this work. It does not perform pier repair. Requests are shared with local pros who then contact the homeowner to schedule an inspection, quote the scope, and carry out any work under their own terms.

Photographs help. A phone photo taken from the skirting access showing a pier stack and the ground around it often tells a contractor more than a paragraph of description.