A raised foundation is five parts that carry a wood floor above the dirt and leave a space under it to crawl. Katella Anaheim Concrete pours the footings and stem walls, stepped where the ground falls.
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Footing to sill plate
A raised foundation holds a wood floor a foot and a half or more above the ground on a concrete wall, and the space it leaves underneath is the point of it. Pipes and ducts run there where a plumber can reach them, a sagging floor can be jacked from below, and the framing never touches damp soil. The five parts are a footing in undisturbed ground, a stem wall at least 6 inches above grade, piers and girders across the middle, bolts tying the sill to the wall, and the vents and hatch.
Katella Anaheim Concrete has poured these since 2016, when Omar Espinoza opened the business after 22 years on other crews, and he sets the wall heights himself. Half of what we build now is a new wing on a house already standing on a raised floor, on the colony streets in the middle of the city, where the old perimeter was cast without steel or bolts and the new one has to meet its floor exactly. The rest is new building on canyon lots where the ground falls.
The work runs under CSLB C-8, held by Omar Espinoza, with liability insurance on every job. A foundation is drawn by an engineer and filed with the city's Building Division before a trench is opened, and it is inspected with the footing steel tied and again with the forms up and the bolts placed, so nothing is poured the inspector has not seen. What we pour carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
When a foundation is due
Set a marble on the floor of a raised house and it rolls toward the corner where a pier has sunk or a stem wall has dropped. A slope you can feel underfoot is the girders resting lower at one end than the other. Jacking cures a pier. A wall that has settled is replaced in sections.
When interior doors have to be planed every few years and the frames have gone out of square, the floor under them is moving with the seasons and the walls are racking with it. That is a foundation going soft under one side of the house, and the doors are the first to measure it.
Old perimeter walls here were poured lean and without steel, and after ninety years some will scratch with a key and shed sand where a hose has run along them. Concrete in that state cannot hold an anchor bolt or a retrofit bracket, so it is not strengthened, it is replaced.
From the crawl space, look where the wood plate meets the concrete. If there is no bolt head every few feet along it the house is resting on its foundation rather than fixed to it, and in a shake it slides. This is the urgent one. A sound wall takes bolts. A soft one, a new wall.
In every foundation
Eight things go into every raised foundation at no separate line, in the order the inspector sees them, because a footing is covered by a wall and a wall by a floor, and each is checked before that happens.
Where a wing meets a house, the old perimeter under the join is cut out in short lengths, the floor above carried on cribbing while it is gone.
The trench goes 12 inches into undisturbed soil, 12 inches wide for one story and 15 for two, and steps down the slope where the ground falls.
Two number 4 bars run the footing, one near the top and one near the bottom, with verticals bent up into the wall at the spacing the drawing shows.
The wall is formed to the height the framer needs, at least 6 inches above finished grade, and level along its top from one corner to the other.
Pier pads are poured on the girder lines across the middle of the floor, so no span rests on the ground and every one can be shimmed later.
Half-inch anchor bolts at 6 feet with 3-inch square plate washers, and every hold-down on the framing plan, are set in the wet wall and checked.
Vent openings within 3 feet of each corner and an access hatch are formed into the wall, so the crawl space breathes and can be entered.
Forms stripped, the trench backfilled and graded to drain away, the inspection card signed and the written guarantee handed over.
How a raised foundation is built
Four ways the same five parts get built, set against what the ground does and how much house stands on them. The steel, the bolts and the crawl space are the same in all four, so the rows are about the footing and the wall.
| Option | Suits | Footing | Above grade | Framing starts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Continuous stem wall | A wing on a raised house on the flat | 12 inches wide, 12 inches down | Matched to the old floor line | 7 days after the wall pour |
| Stepped stem wall | A canyon lot that falls across the plan | Steps down with the grade, each level | Taller on the downhill side | 7 days after the wall pour |
| Two-story wall | A full second floor or a heavy roof | 15 inches wide, engineered steel | Set by the framer's floor line | 7 days, hold-downs checked first |
| Piers and grade beams | Deep fill or clay on a hill pad | Drilled piers to the engineer's depth | Beam spans between the piers | After the beams reach strength |
A continuous wall on a flat lot is the least work and piers with grade beams the most, and the engineer picks between them from the soils report and the drawing.
Old streets and steep lots
A raised floor is still the right answer on two kinds of lot in this city. The colony streets, where the house already stands on one, and the canyon lots, where the ground refuses to lie flat.
The houses inside the old colony square, and along the streets platted off it before the war, were built with wood floors over a crawl space on a perimeter wall poured with no steel in it and no bolts through the sill. A wing added to one has two choices. Drop the new room onto a slab and accept a step down inside the house, or build a raised floor that meets the old one to the inch and carries on through the doorway. We build the second, and bolt the old sill while the wall is open.
Out in the canyon the reason is the ground rather than the house. The lots along the hillside streets fall across their own footprint, and a slab there means a level pad cut into the slope and filled below it. A stem wall does not need the ground flat. The footing steps down the slope on native ground, the wall stands taller downhill, and the floor above is level without a yard of earth moved. On a pad that is already fill the engineer usually asks for drilled piers with grade beams.
From drawing to framer
Five stages, the same crew at each, and two inspections between them. The engineer's drawing comes first, because a foundation is built to it and checked against it, and the floor height is fixed before the trench is dug.
Omar Espinoza shoots the level of the floor the new wall has to meet or the grade it steps down, digs to find native ground, and writes the figure.
The drawing goes to the Building Division with a soils report where the lot needs one, and the pour is booked once the permit is in hand.
The footing is dug to undisturbed ground and stepped with the slope, the bars tied top and bottom, and the inspector signs the open trench.
Wall forms go up to the floor line, verticals, bolts and hold-downs are placed, vents and the hatch are boxed, and the wall is inspected.
Footing and wall are poured, forms stripped at a day, piers set on the girder lines, the trench backfilled, and the framer takes over at 7 days.
Behind the number
The wall's length is on the drawing, so the figure moves on its height, on what carries the house while the old wall is out, and on how many times the footing has to step. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
The new wall is matched to an old floor line, and the old perimeter under the join is cut, cribbed and replaced, which is what takes the time.
Two units on one perimeter mean a longer wall, more hold-downs, and a pour sequenced so one side stays lived in while the other is open.
Each step in the footing is a change of level to form and a taller wall downhill, and a soils report on the pad may add drilled piers.
A wall poured tall enough to walk under for storage or ducts is more concrete and more forming, and is priced as its own line on the sheet.
The visit and the written figure cost nothing, and the call to book it is returned within 1 business day. (657) 220-6196 or send us a message.
Send the form or call, and someone rings back within 1 business day to fix a time. Omar Espinoza shoots the floor line at your house, probes the ground where the footing will go and writes the figure there, and it is yours either way.
Foundations we built
Three reviews from Google, Facebook and the BBB, each about a raised foundation rather than a slab or a drive, and each naming what the wall had to meet or step down.
“Our 1915 house had a crumbling perimeter and no bolts at all. Omar replaced the wall in short lengths with the house cribbed above it, and the floor never moved. The new wall has bolts every six feet and the crawl space finally has a hatch you can fit through.”
“The lot drops about four feet across the footprint, and they stepped the footing down the slope in three levels instead of grading it flat. The wall is level along the top and the framer set his joists straight onto it. The engineer signed it off without a single note.”
“We added a bedroom onto a raised 1930s house and did not want a step down into it. The new stem wall meets the old floor exactly and you cannot tell in the hallway where the old house ends. They bolted the old sill on both sides of the join while they were in there.”
Before you book
What moves the figure, how long the house is on cribbing, what the drawing has to show, what is guaranteed once the framer has the wall, and what goes into it, answered for a house here.
The height of the wall and what has to hold the house up while it is built. A wall on a flat lot meeting a low floor is formed once and poured once. A wall that steps down a canyon lot is formed at every change of level and stands taller downhill, and a wall going in under an existing house means cribbing, short lengths and several pours. Add a soils report where the pad needs one. All of it is on the sheet.
About a week for each 20-foot length, and only that length is ever open at once. The old wall under it is cut out, the footing dug and inspected, the new wall formed, inspected and poured, and the cribbing comes out once the concrete has 7 days on it. A new wing or a new building has no cribbing at all and runs two to three weeks from trench to framer, most of it waiting on the two inspections and the cure.
Yes. Cutting out the old perimeter under a join or along a failed length, hauling it, and the cribbing that carries the house while it is gone are all in the figure. So is the dig to undisturbed ground, the steel, the bolts, the vents and the hatch. What is named at the visit rather than added later is the engineer's drawing, a soils report if one is asked for, and any drilled piers the report calls for.
An engineer's drawing, and on a hill pad a soils report to go with it. The drawing shows the footing size and depth, the wall height, the steel, the bolt and hold-down spacing and the vents, and the Building Division checks it before a permit is issued. The inspector then comes twice, once for the open trench with the steel tied and once for the formed wall with the bolts placed. We file the set and meet him.
Almost never. Settlement, soil movement and the slow decay of a ninety-year-old wall are excluded from most policies as earth movement or as wear, so a perimeter that has gone soft is the owner's to replace. What a carrier may cover is sudden damage from a named cause, a broken water main washing the ground out under a wall, or a vehicle striking the house. Earthquake damage is its own policy.
How it was built. The footing depth and width, the steel, the wall height, the bolts and hold-downs and the vents are printed on the estimate before you sign, and the finished foundation carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built. Ground moving beyond what the engineer designed for, a later trade cutting the wall, and the settling of old perimeter we did not replace sit outside it.
A 3,500 psi ready-mix poured the morning it is batched, number 4 bars top and bottom in the footing with number 4 verticals bent into the wall, half-inch anchor bolts embedded 7 inches at 6 feet on center with 3-inch square plate washers, and the hold-down anchors the framing plan names. The footing sits on undisturbed native ground or on compacted base where fill came out. All of it is on the estimate.
Yes, and most people do. The house is carried on cribbing under one 20-foot length at a time and the floor above it stays level, so rooms are used as normal, though the room over the open length is noisy for a week and the crawl space is off limits. Water and power stay on. For a new wing the work is outside the existing wall until the framer opens it. You need to be home for the first visit and the last.
Towns we pour in
The eight nearest towns on the coverage list, with the straight-line distance from the office on West Katella Avenue beside each. Every foundation is measured against its drawing on the lot before a figure is written.
Four jobs that are drawn on the same set or poured in the same weeks as the stem wall, by the same crew, and itemized on the one written estimate.
The pads under porch posts and deck beams the perimeter wall does not carry.
The floor and footing in one pour, for a detached unit on a flat lot behind the house.
Lifting a house off a failed wall so a whole new perimeter can go in beneath it.
The flight up to a raised floor's door, doweled into the new wall and cast solid.
Call or send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. Say whether it is a wing on a raised house, a wall being replaced or a new building on a slope, and the visit can be booked for a day inside the same week.