The garage brick gets finished too
When a garage corner settles on a 2000s house, the crew that sets the piers also closes the brick cracks, with no subcontractors.
Foundation and Leaning Chimney Repair in Woodstock, GA
Wet clay along Noonday Creek, Rose Creek and the Little River can press on Woodstock's 1990s and 2000s basements while fill lets stoops and garage corners drop, and Anglin's stops that movement with steel piers and wall braces.
Young houses, old problems
Creek clay and graded lots are why young Woodstock houses need foundation repair
Anglin's does foundation repair in Woodstock and the rest of Cherokee County from our Marietta office, with our own crews. Woodstock's housing is young. About 43 percent was built between 2000 and 2009, another 26 percent in the 2010s, and less than 1 percent before 1960.
So the problems here belong to houses reaching 20 to 35 years old: basement walls under clay pressure, stoops and garage corners on settling fill, and a smaller number of leaning chimneys. The person who quotes your job does this work for a living, and no commissioned salesman is involved.
The step next door sits tight
Why your townhome stoop dropped and theirs didn't
You share a wall with the unit next door. Their front step sits tight against the threshold and yours has dropped away from it, with a shadow line under the door. The brick beside your step has a crack climbing toward the light fixture.
About one Woodstock home in six is a townhome, and the downtown blocks have filled in with them since 2004. The lots were cut and filled to make level pads, so the depth of loose fill can change from one unit to the next.
Your stoop, not the building
A stoop poured on backfill and never tied to the foundation follows that fill down. That makes it your stoop rather than the building, which usually shortens the conversation with the HOA, and push piers under it bring the stoop back level with the door.
The structural side of it
What changes when masons handle a Woodstock foundation
Many companies ranking for Woodstock lead with basement water products, and we lead with the structure, the work our family has done since 1930.
No drainage system to sell you
We don't do waterproofing or drainage, so our quote covers only the structural repair.
Pier warranty that goes with the house
Sell your Eagle Watch or Deer Run house later, and whoever buys it inherits our lifetime pier warranty.
A contract a townhome board can read in one sitting
Two pages show an HOA the whole scope and the quoted price for work on a shared building.
Creek country and graded pads
Foundation trouble along Woodstock's creeks and graded subdivision pads
Woodstock is creek country. Noonday Creek, the Little River and smaller creeks and wetlands run through and around the city, and the city still brings up the September 2009 flood. The upland soils, Madison, Pacolet and Cecil, are close to half clay in the subsoil, rated low for swelling but slow to drain.
Wet clay behind Towne Lake basements
Rose Creek and Noonday Creek cross Towne Lake toward the Little River arm of Lake Allatoona. The bottomland soils mapped around Woodstock include Cartecay, mapped as frequently flooded.
A basement wall on that side of a lot can hold back wet clay for months. After enough rainy seasons, the push shows up as a horizontal crack or a wall bowing in at the middle.
Fill under 2000s garages and stoops
- Pads cut and filled. Subdivision lots here were leveled for the build, and fill settles differently than the undisturbed ground beside it.
- Stoops never tied in. A stoop poured on backfill and never tied to the foundation drops and leaves a gap at the door.
See how push piers reach load-bearing soil on our foundation repair page.
The few that lean here
The few Woodstock chimneys that lean, and why
Woodstock has almost no houses older than 1960, so old brick chimneys are a small part of the picture. Houses from the 1970s through the 1990s make up about a quarter of the city, including early Towne Lake neighborhoods, and they are the age where brick chimneys start to move.
- Pulling away from the siding. A brick chimney on its own footing tips outward when the soil under it softens, and a gap opens from the ground up.
- Tilting in above the roofline. A chimney bricked on roof framing never meant to carry it, or built around a factory fireplace, leans toward the house at the top.
The first gets steel piers under its footing, then is pushed back and pinned, while the second is pushed into position and held by steel beams that bear on an interior wall built to carry weight. Our masons repair the mortar either way, and a roofer reseals the flashing. More on leaning chimney repair.
More ways we can help
Stoops, garage brick and back decks in Woodstock
These are the other repairs Woodstock's 1990s and 2000s houses tend to need.
Stoops that dropped away from the door
Push piers lift the stoop back against the house, see sinking steps and stoops.
Two-car garage brick
A wide opening puts a lot of brick on one steel lintel, and a sag shows as cracks above the door, see garage lintel repair.
Retaining walls on terraced Towne Lake yards
A bulging existing wall holding back a terrace gets anchored and locked in where it stands.
Deck posts on sloped creek lots
Back decks over falling ground rest on posts whose footings can sink, and we set piers under them.
Depot town, then subdivisions
Woodstock's depot-town core and the subdivisions around it
Woodstock grew from a small railroad town, with a depot built in 1912, into Cherokee County's largest city, mostly during the 1990s and 2000s. Only a handful of old brick buildings remain around Main Street, and since 2004 the downtown blocks have filled in with townhouses and small-lot homes.
Eagle Watch, Deer Run, Brookshire
Towne Lake took shape in the late 1980s, and Eagle Watch, its first neighborhood, added homes from 1988 to 2007. Deer Run followed from 1993 to 2000, and Brookshire went up between 2001 and 2004. A settling stoop here can involve a neighbor and an HOA.
Towne Lake city line, 3-inch trees
Only the southeast part of Towne Lake is inside city limits, and the rest is unincorporated Cherokee County. Inside the city, removing any tree over 3 inches in caliper needs a permit, so a tree whose roots are lifting a footing waits on that paperwork.
History, tree and creek pages worth bookmarking
- Preservation Woodstock history timeline: the depot, Main Street's old brick buildings and how the town grew.
- Tree Preservation: when a tree removal permit is required inside city limits.
- Stormwater & Environmental Management: the creeks and runoff that drain toward Lake Allatoona.
How the day usually goes
A dropped stoop and cracked garage corner, lifted
With no finished Woodstock job to show yet, here's the usual sequence on a 2000s house.
- Measure what moved. We check the gap at the door, the crack pattern and the level across the garage, then decide how many piers it needs.
- Pier the stoop. Two steel push piers often carry a brick stoop, lifted back so the gap closes.
- Bracket the garage corner. A custom bracket goes on the footing, a pier is driven to load-bearing soil, and the corner rises under hydraulic pressure.
- Finish the brick. Our masons close the cracks and re-mortar the joints, and most jobs like this take one day.
Customer Reviews
The work matters.
So does your word.
Hear from homeowners about the repair, the crew, and the finished work.
★★★★★
“Great team that fixed the front steps separating from the porch. They also did an excellent job reinforcing cracks in the bricking around the garage.”
Shanna N.
Front steps and garage brick repaired
Tree permits and stoop gaps
Tree permits, stoop gaps and bowing walls: Woodstock questions
Honest answers before you make a decision.
Still have QuestionsWhat's moving and what isn't
Before your Woodstock stoop gap gets wider
Call 770-422-2924, Monday through Saturday, or leave word with the answering service after hours. We'll tell you what's moving and what isn't before you spend anything.
Request your free foundation estimate