I have an older home in an historic area in Tampa that had sagging floors and needed a fair amount of foundation repair work. Needless to say, I wanted it done properly, so, I decided to get 5 companies in to quote. After receiving all the quotes and planned proposals for repairing the foundations, there was no doubt in my mind that LRE Foundation Repair was by far the best company for me to go with, for several reasons.
Before they came out to access and quote, LRE mailed me an 81 page booklet on foundation problems and repairs - published by an independent company - Foundation Supportworks. This gave me a good understanding of different foundation problems and why they happen, including sagging floors - and the best way to go about fixing them. There was also great information on various jacks and piers and when to use what etc. which was invaluable to me when looking at what the other companies had proposed.
The Design Specialist LRE sent out to access the situation and to give a proposed plan and quote was someone who had years of experience doing the actual work. This guy was Zac Spardello. His professionalism and customer service goes beyond the expected. He took photos, liasoned with their engineering dept before he came up with a definite planned proposal and quote.
Zac took time explaining to me what was wrong and had images of everything including problem areas, and how and why they proposed fixing it in certain ways, along with the with the information I had gained from the booklet. When I compared his proposed plan to the others, it was clear that he really knew what he was talking about. Other companies had in some cases sent out Estimators who clearly had never done the actual work and it showed as they had given very generalized solutions, when I compared plans.
LRE was the only co who had a combination of replacing areas of old wood plus adding additional wood as well as jacks and metal beams, along with repairing/ replacing 4 brick block columns, and redoing the subfloor in certain areas. Some companies proposed only adding wood, others only metal, and this combination of materials that LRE proposed seemed to cover all basis.
Permits. LRE was ready to go with permits within about a month, and they gave me a definite starting date within days. I was told by most other companies I'd have to wait at least 6 weeks to get the permits, and one company said they didn't need it as their solution only required jacks. Which is probably fine in some instances but in this case where I knew a fair amount of work was needed, I felt better about having permits.
With LRE, everything was done to code and with engineering reports. LRE also offers a 25-year guarantee which is transferable to the new owner if the house is ever sold. They also offered a 5% discount if I signed with a certain time frame. They were not the cheapest nor were they the most expensive, all adding up to why I chose them.
In conclusion, the work was done on time and the results were even better than I expected. I was not in Tampa during this time, I was kept in the loop with updates by phone and photos. A big thank you to Zac for all his help and support, as well as Tavian the foreman, and his team who did all the work. An added bonus is that a few weeks later I got a call from a co that was going to spray the soil under the house which would take care of any termites as the soil had been disrupted with the foundation work, which was all paid for by LRE as part of their repair package.
Marc. B. of Tampa, FL
Monday, June 6th