Foundation Repair Insurance

Your crew spends a hot week setting push piers along the back wall of a 1990s stucco house. The lift goes right. The floor comes up, the gap at the back door closes, and the homeowner is thrilled. Three weeks later the phone rings. A tile run in the kitchen has cracked, the sewer line under the slab is backing up, and the neighbor says the block wall between the yards has a new crack right where your excavation was. Everyone wants to know who is paying for it.

That call is why foundation repair insurance exists. You move houses on purpose, and when a house moves, everything attached to it can move too. Claims usually show up after the truck has left. This guide covers what each policy actually pays for, for companies that do foundation repair, underpinning, push and helical piers, slab jacking and leveling, crack and wall repair, and the waterproofing that goes with a repair.

If you work in one of our home markets, we also wrote local pages: foundation repair insurance in Henderson, foundation repair insurance in Phoenix, foundation repair insurance in San Diego, and foundation repair insurance in Lehi, Utah.

Why your trade carries a different kind of risk

Most contractors worry about what they might drop, spill, or set on fire. You worry about what happens when a few tons of house shift a fraction of an inch. A lift done perfectly by the book can still crack drywall, pop tile, bind a window, or stress a plumbing line that was already worn out. Underpinning puts you digging right against footings. Driving helical piers means pushing steel into ground that may hide gas, water, sewer, and irrigation lines nobody marked well. And the lifetime warranty that helps you close the sale keeps your name on that house for as long as it stands.

General liability: the house, the neighbors, and what is underground

General liability is the policy that responds when your work damages someone else’s property or hurts someone who does not work for you. For a foundation company, these are the claims that come up again and again:

• Interior damage during or after a lift, like cracked drywall, broken tile, sticking doors, or a slab plumbing leak the homeowner blames on you.
• Damage to a neighbor’s fence, block wall, driveway, or landscaping from excavation, equipment, or shifting soil near the property line.
• A utility strike while digging for push piers or driving helicals, anywhere from a sprinkler line to a gas service.
• Someone falling into an open excavation or getting hurt around your equipment while the crew is at lunch.

Two things to know before you rely on it. First, liability coverage is built for damage to other people’s property and injuries to other people. It generally will not pay to tear out and redo your own work if the work itself was wrong. A pier that has to be reset is usually your cost, while the cracked kitchen tile it caused may be a covered claim. Second, some contractor liability policies carry earth movement or subsidence exclusions. In most trades that wording hardly matters. In yours, where the whole job is soil and settlement, it can matter more than anything else on the policy. Have an agent read it with you before you buy.

Completed operations and your lifetime warranty

Most foundation companies back their piers with a long or lifetime warranty. That warranty is your promise, and insurance does not take it over. Sending a crew back out to re-adjust piers under your own warranty is normally a cost of doing business.

What insurance can do is respond when finished work turns into a liability claim later, like a lawsuit over damage a homeowner believes your repair caused years after the job closed. That protection is called completed operations coverage, and a properly built general liability policy includes it. The catch is that it depends on the coverage you have in force and the policy terms when the claim arrives. If you let coverage lapse, or switch to a policy with weaker completed operations terms, years of finished jobs can be left exposed. If you sell lifetime warranties, ask how your policy treats claims on jobs you finished long ago.

Inland marine for jacks, pier drivers, and tools

Hydraulic jacks, pier drivers, helical torque motors, slab jacking pumps, foam rigs, and steel pier sections cost real money, and they live on job sites and in trailers parked overnight. Inland marine, sometimes called tools and equipment coverage, follows that gear from site to site. If a trailer full of jacks gets stolen from a job on a Sunday, this is the policy that pays. Your liability policy will not, and neither will the homeowner’s.

Commercial auto for trucks and trailers

Stacks of steel piers, a mini excavator on a trailer, or a foam rig in a box truck all put serious weight on the road. Commercial auto covers accidents involving the vehicles your business uses, including trailers you list on the policy. If any work truck is still insured on a personal policy, read personal vs. commercial auto insurance before you assume it will respond to a wreck on the way to a job.

Workers comp for a physical crew

Foundation work is hard on bodies. Your people dig by hand along footings, haul pier sections, run jacks that can pinch a hand, crawl under houses, and work through summer afternoons in the sun. Back strains, crushed fingers, and excavation injuries are the claims you will see most. Workers compensation pays medical bills and lost wages when an employee gets hurt on the job. Each state we write has its own rules on who must carry it and which owners can opt out.

Umbrella limits and certificates

Builders, property managers, HOAs, and commercial clients often ask for proof of insurance, and they usually want more than a basic policy. A typical request calls for higher limits, additional insured status, and a waiver of subrogation. An umbrella policy is how most companies raise their limits without rebuilding everything else. Remember that a certificate of insurance only reports what your policies already say. If a contract asks for something your policy does not include, the certificate cannot make up the difference. The policy has to change first.

A quick word on licensing

Licensing rules differ by state, so confirm your exact scope with your state board. The right license class matters for your contracts and permits, though a wrong class does not automatically cancel an insurance policy. Here is the short version for the four states we write:

• Nevada: the State Contractors Board has a piers and foundations specialty for this kind of work.
• Arizona: the Registrar of Contractors lists a piers and foundations classification.
• California: CSLB does not list a class titled foundation repair. The Concrete Contractor class is the closest named fit for slab work, so confirm your scope with CSLB.
• Utah: DOPL has a foundation, excavation, and demolition specialty license, and licensed contractors must carry liability coverage of at least $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate.

Where foundation repair ends and other trades begin

Foundation repair sits next to several other trades, and insurers price each one differently. If most of your revenue comes from digging and grading, read our excavation contractor insurance guide. If you mostly pour new flatwork and foundations, see concrete contractor insurance. Companies that run whole remodels around a repair should look at general contractor insurance. Tear-out work has its own page on demolition contractor insurance, and small patch-and-fix outfits usually fit handyman contractor insurance better.

Getting a quote

You can get a quote fast if you have a few things on hand: your annual revenue and how it splits between piering, slab leveling, wall repair, and waterproofing, your payroll, the trucks and trailers you run, the value of your jacks and equipment, how your warranty reads, and any insurance requirements from the builders or property managers you work with. Western Pacific Insurance is an independent agency based in Henderson, Nevada, and we place foundation repair insurance for contractors in Nevada, Arizona, California, and Utah. Call 702-932-3105 or request a quote online.