Aerial view of a tile roof home, steel beams and a mini excavator under one wing, lawn split by fissures

Residential project, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

Helical piers advanced about 30 feet to bedrock under a home the ground was pulling apart.

A hillside home in Rancho Palos Verdes had split in half as the ground beneath it moved toward the slope. The crew installed helical piers about 30 feet down to carry the home’s weight to competent strata or bedrock rather than the moving surface soil.

At a glance

Location: Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Home: Hillside home
Problem: Landslide movement; home split, one half sinking and moving toward the slope
Method: Helical piers
Pier depth: About 30 feet, to competent strata or bedrock
First visit: June 2024

The challenge

The road into this part of Rancho Palos Verdes had washed away in recent landslides, and the crew needed four wheel drive to reach the property. Once there, the damage was plain. The home had split in half, with one half sinking and moving sideways toward the slope it sits on.

Cracks and fissures ran through the grass and soil across the whole property, not only at the house. The ground itself was moving.

The approach

The crew installed several vertical helical piers beneath the foundation and advanced each one until it reached competent, load bearing strata or bedrock. On this property that was about 30 feet below the surface.

Going that deep is the point of the method. Each pier is advanced past the surface soil that is moving so the home’s weight can bypass it and reach ground that is not. The drone photographs from the first visit show the scale of the ground movement the crew was working against.

Is the ground around your home moving?

Fissures in the yard, a walkway pulling apart or a home that has started to separate are worth a look from a crew that works on hillsides. Tell us what you are seeing and we will come out for a free evaluation.

Helical Piers

From the site

The property from above on the first visit.

Wide foggy hillside aerial with the home small among trees and two work trucks parked on the road below — Two work trucks parked on the road below the home, with the hillside above lost in coastal fog on the first visit.

Aerial of the home and garden with an eroded dirt road and collapsed stone terrace along the lower edge — An eroded dirt road and a collapsed stone terrace along the lower edge of the property.

Overhead view of a lawn torn by zigzag fissures with a brick path and a fallen tree stump — Fissures like these ran through the grass and soil across the entire property.

Cracks stepping across a lawn and a brick walkway toward the single story wing of the home — The brick walkway below the single story wing, broken and offset where the ground beneath it has shifted.

Straight down aerial of a tile roof, cracked lawn and lumber stacked along a brick path — Straight down over the single story wing, the fissure line cuts across the lawn between the house and the brick path, with lumber stacked along the walkway and plywood laid over the break.

Two crew members on a plywood walkway beside a broken brick path and a split lawn — Two crew members cross the broken walkway on temporary plywood laid over the fissure.

Straight down drone view of both wings of the home, steel beams and an excavator at left, cracked yard at right — From directly above, the two problems read at once: the sinking wing at left and the sliding ground at right.

Steel beams extending from beneath a two story stucco wing, a mini excavator digging along the footing — Steel beams beneath the footing of the two story wing, with the mini excavator working along the footing line.

Overhead of steel beams under the home, an excavator at work and a cracked lawn beyond the cypress trees — The underpinning work under the two story wing in the foreground, with the fissured lawn showing past the cypress trees.

Aerial of the home from the hillside side, beams and excavator under the far wing, workers in the yard — Both wings in one frame: the single story wing sits on the sliding lawn while the two story wing is being underpinned.

What this means for your home

Talk to us about ground that is moving.

Every hillside is different, and no photograph of one home says what another needs. A free evaluation looks at what your foundation is sitting on and at what it would take to carry the home past it.

Ask us for a straightforward recommendation. If the answer is not a pier, we will say so.