Foundation installation in Lincoln CA - built to suit your lot and your soil

Most people who call me have plans or an idea, a piece of ground, and real questions about what should go under it. The price moves with the foundation type, the size of the footprint, how much the lot slopes and how much digging and steel the design needs. The schedule turns mostly on the city's review and inspections, and on giving the concrete time to cure, which means letting it harden and gain strength before anything heavy goes on it. I'll walk the lot with you and put your own figure in writing, and if you already know you want a slab, our slab foundation building page goes deeper on that.

I start with your lot and your project, whether it's a new home, an addition or a replacement, and we talk through whether a slab or a raised foundation fits better, because the ground decides more than the drawings do. Then we plan the trenches, forms and steel around the inspection for your address. Our crew digs the footing trenches down to firm, clean ground, sets the forms and ties in the rebar, the steel inside the concrete that holds it together when the ground or an earthquake tries to pull it apart. We pour early in the day, because concrete that cooks in the afternoon heat can end up with a weak, dusty top, and then we finish it and let it cure. When budgets get tight, the first thing people want to trim is the digging and the steel, since nobody sees it once the walls go up. I won't cut there. It's like prep in a kitchen, because once the truck shows up there's no starting over.

Plenty of foundation jobs come with concrete footings for a porch, a garage or a wall that needs its own support, and it makes sense to plan them at the same time. Property owners putting up a bigger building often need concrete parking lot building too, and laying out the grades for both together keeps water running away from the new foundation instead of toward it.

The City of Lincoln requires a building permit any time a structure is built, enlarged, altered, repaired, moved or demolished, so plan on one for new foundation work. Before we start, we check with the city or county office that covers your address, and when a permit is needed we take care of the paperwork and inspections with you. The city also says any contractor working there needs a current City of Lincoln business license, current workers' compensation and a bond, and every subcontractor needs the license and the bond too. Ask anyone you're comparing to show you those before you sign.

The city posts its design values as Seismic Design Category D, with no frost line or snow load. In plain terms, there's no frozen ground to dig below here, so earthquake design does more to shape the steel and hardware than winter does, and you can ask any contractor how their plan accounts for that. The bigger difference job to job is the lot itself, since flatter ground like much of what we see in Roseville usually suits a slab, while lots get steeper toward Auburn, where a raised foundation comes up more often.