Whatever's wrong under your house — standing water, wood rot, sagging floors, fallen insulation, mold — we diagnose it on the spot and hand you a fixed-price plan the same day. No pressure, no scare tactics.
A licensed local crew — usually out in 24 to 72 hours. Written scope, fixed price, no pressure.
Repair calls in Davidson break down along the same two-era fault line as everything else in this town, and the calls sound completely different depending on which side the homeowner is on. Pre-1900 core house calls sound like this: my dining-room floor has started to feel bouncy near the china cabinet, the door to the pantry is dragging on the sill, and there is a hairline crack running down the plaster where the north wall meets the ceiling. That is a girder problem. Somewhere under that dining room a hand-hewn heart-pine beam is losing cross-section in a pier pocket or a stone pier under it has walked itself out of plumb and dropped 3/4 of an inch since the last time anyone was under the house. Modern-Davidson calls sound like this: my son bounces up and down in the second bedroom and the light fixture in the kitchen below shakes. That is a joist problem — usually a sistered joist that was undersized to begin with, or a run of 2x8s spanning a distance the builder should have specified 2x10s for, or a joist that has bowed under a 25-year moisture cycle in a vented crawl with no dehumidifier.
I have crawled repair jobs from Concord Rd to Robert Walker Dr, and the physical work is on completely different scales. The pre-1900 historic-core repair on an 1889 house near Davidson College is a five-to-seven day job with a Mecklenburg building permit, incremental jacking over multiple days to let the framing move without cracking plaster upstairs, laminated LVL sister beams matched to hand-hewn 8x10 originals, and new poured pier footings alongside failing stone or brick piers to transfer load onto Grip-Tite adjustable steel posts. The Davidson Village 1998 repair on a bouncy master-bedroom floor is a two-day job with a straightforward joist sistering pass, maybe a Tiger SmartJack under a girder that a builder undersized, no permit unless we are cutting into subfloor. Same underlying physics — a floor system that has failed to keep up with the load — but the repair playbooks are entirely different.
The other Davidson-specific repair story is drainage-driven decay in the historic-core stock. Old oaks and pecans along Concord Rd and Griffith St drop leaf litter into every foundation vent that has ever existed on a pre-1900 house, and the heavy shade holds humidity against north-facing walls year-round. Combined with the pre-1900 lack of a continuous perimeter wall — moisture rises straight from hand-dug clay into the crawl atmosphere — you get chronic RH in the 90s from May through October and slow fungal decay in every girder pocket that sits on stone or original soft-fired brick. The repair on that is not just structural. It is structural plus source-control: fix the framing, then encapsulate and dehumidify, or the same repair comes back in ten years. I do not do the structural repair without walking the homeowner through the source-control story at the same time. Free on-site inspection, fixed written quote, no surprises whether you are on Main St or in Davidson Village.
On a pre-1900 core repair, the first move is always structural mapping before I quote anything. I map every pier — stone, brick, brick-veneered-over-stone, whatever mix the house has — with a plumb bob and a moisture meter, identify every girder pocket that shows fungal decay or standing water history, and probe every joist for soft spots. On an 1889 two-story on Concord Rd or a comparable 1890s house near Davidson College, that mapping takes two hours because the crawl geometry forces you to belly-crawl every joist bay. Then I sit at the kitchen table with the homeowner and walk through what has to happen in what order. Structural repair is a Mecklenburg building permit — I pull it, file through CityInspect.charlottenc.gov, and schedule the inspection for after the load transfer is complete. Historic District Commission review is not usually triggered for interior structural work but I check the scope against the overlay boundary every time.
Execution runs three to five working days minimum on a pre-1900 core repair with a rotted girder. Day one is temporary shoring — Tiger SmartJacks positioned under the girder to carry load while we work below. Day two is footing prep alongside the failing pier — a proper 12-inch depth to hit undisturbed clay below the Mecklenburg 6 to 8 inch freeze line, poured concrete pad, hardware set for the Grip-Tite adjustable steel post that will carry the transferred load. Day three is sister-beam prep and initial installation — sizing the laminated LVL to match what the original hand-hewn heart pine was carrying (a 3-1/2 by 9-1/2 LVL cleanly sisters a decayed 3x8 heart pine in most cases), through-bolting to the original where the original is still sound, hangers where it is not. Days four and five are incremental jacking — one-quarter turn on the adjustable posts at a time, spaced hours apart, watching the plaster upstairs for hairline movement. Rushing that jacking sequence is how you crack a homeowner's dining-room ceiling. Then a final Mecklenburg building inspection and we are done.
Modern-Davidson repairs run the standard playbook. A sagging joist in a 1998 Davidson Village master bedroom gets a sister-joist pass — 2x10 or 2x12 pressure-treated sisters bolted through the original with lag bolts every 16 inches, glued with construction adhesive for load-sharing. A bouncy floor in a River Run house gets either a mid-span Tiger SmartJack under the girder if the girder is the problem, or a supplemental beam if the joist span is the problem. Two-day job typically, no permit unless we cut into subfloor. Historic District Commission not triggered — those neighborhoods are outside the overlay. Davidson Village architectural committee does not review interior structural work in my experience, and River Run and St. Alban's Square are the same. Clean, straightforward, done.
Pre-1900 historic-core structural repair spec: Grip-Tite adjustable steel posts with the load rating matched to the transferred girder load (usually the 18,000-pound rating is overkill but I spec it anyway for margin), Tiger SmartJack for temporary shoring during install, laminated LVL sister beams sized per the original hand-hewn heart-pine dimensions — typically a 3-1/2 by 9-1/2 LVL for a 3x8 heart-pine girder, occasionally doubled if the span is over 14 feet. Through-bolting hardware is 1/2-inch galvanized carriage bolts with washers, spaced every 16 inches along the sister-original interface. New poured pier footings are 24-inch by 24-inch by 12-inch concrete pads with hardware set for the adjustable post, poured against undisturbed clay to hit below the 6 to 8 inch Mecklenburg freeze depth. On soft-fired 1880s brick piers that are spalling but not yet failing structurally, I wrap them with a masonry restoration mortar to slow the moisture cycle rather than replacing them wholesale — original brick is part of the historic character and the Davidson HDC prefers restoration over replacement on visible piers.
Modern-Davidson repair spec: pressure-treated 2x10 or 2x12 sister joists depending on original dimension, GRK RSS structural screws or Simpson SDS-25612 for sister-joist attachment (skip the lag bolts on modern framing — the structural screws hold better and drive faster), construction adhesive along the sister-original interface for load-sharing. Girder shimming on Davidson Village 1998 construction is usually a Tiger SmartJack under the mid-span with a proper poured footing below if the original pier is undersized — 20-inch by 20-inch by 10-inch pad is standard for the newer-construction loads. Rim joist sistering on the newer stock is 2x8 pressure-treated bolted through the original rim with 3/8-inch through-bolts every 24 inches.
Yes — Davidson is a regular crawlspace repair route. Free on-site inspection anywhere in Davidson, fixed written quote before we touch anything.
Davidson repair is dominated by hand-hewn heart-pine girder decay in stone or soft-fired brick pier pockets on pre-1900 historic-core houses — a slow-motion structural failure that Charlotte franchise crews have literally never seen — while modern Davidson Village and River Run repairs run the same joist-sistering and girder-shimming playbook as any Ballantyne or Cornelius newer-construction job.
28036. All Mecklenburg County addresses covered.
On a pre-1900 core house, ninety percent of the time it is a girder problem, not a joist problem. Original hand-hewn heart-pine girders sit in stone or soft-fired brick pier pockets that trap moisture for 130 years, and the girder loses cross-section from the bottom up where it contacts the pier. The joists themselves are usually still sound — heart pine is remarkable wood — but they have nothing solid to bear on at the girder. You feel that as bounce or sponginess in the floor above. The fix is structural repair on the girder: temporary shoring, new pier footing alongside the failing original with a Grip-Tite adjustable steel post to transfer load, laminated LVL sister beside the decayed heart-pine original, incremental jacking over multiple days. Five to seven working days total on a typical pre-1900 Davidson historic-core job. Mecklenburg building permit required and I pull it. Do not let a contractor tell you the fix is just sistering the joists — that treats the symptom, not the source.
No, and taking them out would be a bad idea structurally and often not allowed by the Davidson Historic District Commission if the piers are visible from any exterior access point. What you do is stabilize any pier that has actually shifted — shim and reset with hydraulic bottle jacks and cedar shims where the shift is minor, or install a new poured footing beside the pier and transfer some of the load onto a Grip-Tite adjustable steel post where the shift is major. The original stone pier stays in place and continues to do what it has done for 130 years — hold up the house — with the modern support carrying whatever load the historic pier can no longer safely bear. On my recent Concord Rd job I stabilized four leaning stone piers this way and left every one of them in place. HDC review was not triggered because none of the work was visible from the exterior.
Probably not serious in a safety sense, but worth fixing. Davidson Village 1998 construction used builder-standard dimensional lumber — usually 2x10 joists on 16-inch centers — and on longer master-bedroom spans that framing meets code but does not feel solid under dynamic load. The fix is either a joist-sistering pass across the affected bay (pressure-treated 2x10 sisters through-bolted to the originals with construction adhesive along the interface) or a supplemental beam mid-span if the whole floor system is undersized. Two-day job typically, no permit needed. The good news on Davidson Village is that everything is standard dimensional lumber and standard construction — no historic pier drama, no capillary issues, straightforward repair. Same fixed written quote as any Ballantyne or Piper Glen equivalent job.
Five to seven working days minimum for a girder-and-pier repair on a typical historic-core house of 1,200 to 1,800 SF. Longer if the scope extends to multiple girders or if the framing needs partial subfloor patching. The physical work runs slow for three reasons: crawl clearance is 22 to 30 inches so everything moves at belly-crawl pace, the incremental jacking sequence has to run over multiple days to let the framing move without cracking plaster upstairs, and the Mecklenburg building permit and inspection add sequencing constraints. That is why I quote the pre-1900 core structural work as a distinct scope from a modern Davidson Village or River Run repair — the physics is similar but the labor factor is roughly triple. Historic District Commission review is not usually triggered for interior structural work but I verify against the overlay boundary before we mobilize.
Free on-site Davidson inspection. Fixed written quote. Call (980) 227-1769 or book below.