How to estimate home foundation and porch repair costs
Severe structural foundation and porch damage requires specialized knowledge that homeowners and prospective buyers typically lack. Without knowing the extent of the rebuild required, people cannot reliably gauge whether the project will be prohibitively expensive before hiring an engineer.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- The most recent one is from September 2026.
- This comes up 24.0× more often in r/HomeMaintenance than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Calling a professional or structural engineerDid this help you?
- 2Putting up temporary shoringDid this help you?
- 3Demolishing or removing the porch entirelyDid this help you?
- 4Getting multiple quotes from small local companiesDid this help you?
- 5Hiring an independent structural engineer for an assessmentDid this help you?
- 6Passing on high vendor quotesDid this help you?
- 7Getting multiple quotes and inspections from different companiesDid this help you?
- 8Buying crack monitors to monitor movement and wait before committing to costly repairsDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“We are curious how extensive of a repair would this be.”source ↗
“Im not a stonemason or concrete guy, so I dont really know, but I know rebuilding that is going to be very costly.”source ↗
“This company told me I needed 6 piers to jack up my foundation for $28k, and a structural engineer said they were full of BS.”source ↗
“Got a free estimate from groundwork’s, I know nothing about foundation work. They suggested doing foam on the left side in the picture and foam and pillars on the right side. Good, bad, getting ripped off? should I get a second opinion, go for it?”source ↗
“When I first saw this and researched I was terrified.”source ↗