Veneer checked before piers get quoted
A stair-step crack in a 1990s brick front can be loose veneer or a dropped footing, and we tell you which.
Foundation and Leaning Chimney Repair in Alpharetta, GA
Many of Alpharetta's 1980s and '90s basements sit on graded ground that has had decades to settle, and Anglin's foundation repair crews put those corners and chimneys back on steel.
Two decades of subdivision building
Foundation repair and leaning chimney work on Alpharetta's graded subdivision fill
Anglin's does foundation repair in Alpharetta, GA on most of the city's houses: two-story 1980s and 1990s homes, many with basements on graded lots. We stabilize settling corners and leaning chimneys with steel push piers, and our own masons repair the brick. Your free estimate comes from someone who has installed piers, not a commissioned salesman.
Census counts put more than half of Alpharetta's homes in the 1980 to 1999 window, the age when settled fill, broken wall ties and sagging garage lintels start showing up together.
Backing out of the garage
A settling corner seen from your Alpharetta driveway
You back out of the garage and the crack over the door catches your eye again. It runs a little farther up the brick than it did last spring, and the front window over the porch has started to stick. Houses like yours went up here in the 1980s and 1990s on pads cut and filled out of rolling ground.
Forty years later, the dirt under one corner has given more than the dirt under the rest, and the brick above it shows that first. From the street it looks like nothing much. It is still worth having somebody read that crack before it steps across the front of the house.
We check the veneer first
A mason-run company for Alpharetta brick and basements
Foundation trouble here usually arrives with cracked brick attached, so one company should handle both halves.
No depth surcharge in reworked fill
A pier may pass through a lot of graded dirt before it bears, and that extra depth never costs you extra.
Our own crew, start to finish
Certified welders fabricate them in-house for heavy loads like a two-story gable chimney. The people who lift your garage corner also match the brick afterward, with no subcontractors.
A warranty that follows the house
Our piers carry a lifetime warranty that transfers to the next owner if you sell.
Fill that never stopped settling
Why Alpharetta subdivision foundations settle on fill
The USDA soil survey maps much of central Alpharetta as "urban land," ground reworked so heavily that no native soil gets named, which is likely how the city's basement lots were graded: cut the high spots, fill the low ones. The native Appling and Hard Labor clays here are a low-shrink type, so water and loose fill do the work, not seasonal swelling.
Garage corners that drop first
Loose fill keeps compressing under a house for years, and rarely evenly. Corners carry the most weight, so settling usually starts there and pulls the brick toward the low spot.
- A crack climbing out of a garage door corner.
- A front window that suddenly sticks.
Wet backfill on 1980s basement walls
Slopes of 10 to 25 percent send runoff at uphill basement walls, and low lots along Big Creek stay soaked after heavy storms.
- What it looks like: a horizontal crack or a bulge at mid-wall, which means soil pressure is moving the wall.
- What we do: brace the bowed wall with steel beams and drive piers under the settling footings to load-bearing strata.
How callers describe it
- "Sagging lentil. Cracking above the garage."
- "Cinder block around the home is cracking"
The foundation repair page walks through each step of a pier installation.
Daylight at the gable end
Alpharetta chimneys pulling away from the gable end
The whole stack tips off the gable
On many two-story houses of this era the chimney climbs the outside of a brick gable. When its footing settles the chimney tips outward, leaving a crack from the ground toward the soffit and daylight between the brick and the siding. The cause is the soil under the chimney rather than the brickwork.
It leans in only above the roofline
That one usually traces back to a mason who rested the upper brick on plywood and rafters rather than a load-bearing wall.
Pulling a separating chimney back
We drive steel push piers under the footing, then lift and push the chimney toward the house together, since piers alone rarely bring it back to plumb. Brick anchors replace the broken wall ties, and the same crew repairs the opened mortar with no teardown.
We don't do liners, caps or flue work, and any flashing after a roof opening belongs to your roofer. Read more about our leaning chimney repair process.
More ways we can help
Garage steel, townhome stoops and old floors in Alpharetta
Houses from the same era as Windward and Berkshire Manor can need one of these alongside the foundation work.
Sagging steel over two-car garages
Garage lintel repair fixes the brick crack that climbs from a door corner when the lintel above it sags.
Bowed walls in 1990s basements
Basement wall repair braces poured or block walls that wet backfill has pushed inward.
Townhome stoops drifting from the door
About one in nine Alpharetta homes is attached, and their poured stoops can settle away from the house until we pier them.
Rolling floors in downtown's oldest houses
The few homes left from the 1850s to the 1910s can have floors that dip as the old supports under them give way.
Windward, Berkshire Manor, downtown
Alpharetta's building booms and the ground they left behind
Alpharetta grew in two big waves. The 1980s added about a fifth of today's homes and the 1990s about a third, mostly two-story basement houses on graded lots, while only a small slice predates 1980.
Windward and Berkshire Manor
Sloped lake lots often mean walk-out basements and retaining walls.
- Windward: a 3,400-acre planned community east of GA 400, built around the 200-acre Lake Windward from the mid-1980s into the early 2000s.
- Berkshire Manor: 329 Pulte homes off Haynes Bridge Road, dating to the early and mid 1980s.
Downtown's 1850s to 1910s houses
Downtown is older still, with a handful of houses from 1856 to 1912, at least one still keeping its original mantels. The city's Historic Preservation Commission keeps an inventory of properties with potential for historic designation.
When Big Creek floods low yards
The National Weather Service warned in May 2026 that Big Creek would put water in low-lying backyards, at levels not seen since early 2020. Ground that stays soaked that long softens under footings, and the low corner of a basement house is usually where settling shows first.
Look up your lot and house
- USGS Big Creek flood-inundation maps: Flood maps for 12.4 miles of Big Creek, made with the cities of Alpharetta and Roswell.
- NWS gauge for Big Creek near Alpharetta: Current creek levels and flood stage forecasts.
- Alpharetta & Old Milton County Historical Society building list: Build dates for the city's historic homes and downtown buildings.
How a gable chimney comes back
Bringing back a settled two-story gable chimney
A chimney job on a house built like Alpharetta's usually starts the same way. The chimney has pulled a few inches off the gable, with a gap you can see from the yard. We dig at the footing, bracket it, and drive steel push piers down to load-bearing strata.
Hydraulic pressure lifts the footing while push poles bring the top back in. Brick anchors tie the chimney back to the house, and fresh mortar goes into the opened joints, usually in one day.
Customer Reviews
The work matters.
So does your word.
Hear from homeowners about the repair, the crew, and the finished work.
★★★★★
“We had Anglin's repair some masonry cracks mainly in the front of the house. The two main areas were two large windows and over our garage. Communication with Anglin's was fantastic.”
Beth H.
Cracks, creek water and chimney timing
What people with settling Alpharetta houses ask us
Honest answers before you make a decision.
Still have QuestionsOne visit, three problem spots
Garage, basement and chimney checked in one visit
One trip covers the basement corners, the garage opening and the chimney footing, and you leave with a written proposal. Our office picks up Monday through Saturday at 770-422-2924, and a live answering service takes calls after hours.
Get a free two-page proposal