Where pier and beam shows up in McKinney

Just about anything built here before the mid-1950s sits on pier and beam. That means the Historic District, the blocks running east off the square along Tennessee, Kentucky, and Louisiana, the older stretches of Church Street, and scattered farmhouses that got absorbed as the city grew north. A handful of custom builds since then have used it too, usually on lots where the grade made a slab impractical.

The system is simple: piers in the ground, beams across the piers, joists across the beams, subfloor on top. Everything is accessible and everything is adjustable, which is the great advantage. A slab that has moved needs piers driven twelve feet down. A pier and beam house that has moved can often be brought back with a day of work in the crawl space.

The disadvantage is that the whole assembly is wood, sitting a couple of feet above damp Blackland clay, and it has been sitting there a very long time.

What we actually find down there

Almost every McKinney crawl space we open has some combination of these:

• Original cedar or bois d’arc posts that have rotted at grade. They were good wood. They lasted seventy years. They’re done.
• Shim stacks. Somebody noticed a low spot in 1994 and drove wood shims into the gap. Then somebody did it again in 2008. Now there’s four inches of loose cedar holding up a bedroom.
• Beams sagging between piers. Original pier spacing was often eight or ten feet on center. Modern practice is closer to six. Add a cast iron tub or a stone countertop the house was never designed for and the beam deflects.
• Cracked or crumbling concrete pads. Cast on unprepared soil, no reinforcement, seventy Texas summers.
• Standing water and no vapor barrier. Grade slopes toward the house, water gets under it, and nothing dries out because the vents are painted shut or buried behind a flower bed.
• Joists notched to death by plumbers and HVAC crews. A joist with a four-inch hole drilled through the bottom third is not a joist anymore.

How the repair goes

First we map the floor with a digital level, room by room, the same as we would on a slab. That tells us where the low points are and — more useful — whether they line up with a beam line, a pier line, or neither. A low spot that follows a beam is a beam problem. A low spot in the middle of a room that ignores the framing is usually a joist problem.

Then somebody goes under the house with a light and photographs everything. You get those photos. We would rather show you a rotted post than describe it.

The work itself is straightforward once the diagnosis is right. Temporary jacks take the load, the failed component comes out, and the replacement goes in: new concrete pads poured on compacted soil, treated posts or steel adjustable columns, new or sistered beams, sistered joists where the framing has been compromised. The lift happens in small increments over hours, sometimes across two days, because forcing an old house up quickly cracks plaster and pops door frames that were fine before we got there.

Interior pads are the piece people don’t expect. Many McKinney homes were built with support only at the perimeter and a single center beam. Adding interior pad support under a long span is often the difference between a floor that feels solid and a floor that still bounces after everything else is fixed.

Fix the crawl space or you’ll be back

New wood rots the same way old wood does. If the crawl space stays wet, the repair has a clock on it.

Three things handle most of it. A 6-mil vapor barrier across the soil stops ground moisture from evaporating up into the framing. Clear, unobstructed foundation vents let air move — check yours, they are frequently blocked by shrubs, mulch, or an AC condenser somebody set too close. And exterior grade needs to fall away from the house, which on older McKinney lots it very often does not, because decades of added topsoil and bed edging have quietly built the yard up above the sill line.

If you have persistent standing water, a crawl space drain or sump is worth the money. See our drainage work for how that ties together.

Pier and beam repair cost in McKinney

Work	Typical range
Re-shim and adjust existing piers	$1,200 – $3,500
New concrete pad and post, each	$300 – $650
Beam replacement, per linear foot	$40 – $90
Sistering joists, per joist	$150 – $400
Interior pad support added	$2,500 – $8,000
Full releveling, typical 1,600 sq ft home	$5,000 – $14,000
Vapor barrier install	$1,200 – $3,000

Ranges reflect the McKinney market and vary heavily with crawl space clearance. A house with 30 inches of working room costs meaningfully less to repair than one with 14 inches, because everything takes longer on your back. Your written scope carries the actual price.

Back to foundation repair in McKinney, or read about what an inspection covers.