What this site is
foundationsage is an independent cost guide for US homeowners facing foundation, basement or crawl space repair. We publish itemized price data, a free cost calculator, and guides that explain what each repair involves — including, frequently, that it isn't needed.
We are not a contractor. We don't perform repair work, we don't schedule it, we don't employ or supervise anyone who does, and we don't warranty anything. What we do is publish numbers and, when a homeowner asks, connect them with licensed local contractors who bid the job.
Why it exists
Search for foundation repair costs and nearly every well-ranked result is published by a company that repairs foundations. Those pages aren't necessarily dishonest — many are written carefully — but they share a structural limitation: none of them can comfortably tell you that your crack needs nothing, or that an independent engineer might specify half the scope their salesperson proposed.
A homeowner staring at a $14,000 quote needs exactly that information, and it needs to come from somebody who isn't quoting. That is the gap this site fills.
Who writes this
Dana Keller — cost data and guides
Dana spent 14 years writing and reviewing structural repair estimates for residential foundation projects across the Midwest and South — several thousand itemized bids, from $400 crack injections to six-figure underpinning jobs. At foundationsage, Dana compiles and maintains the cost data and writes the guides.
Dana Keller has no financial relationship with any contractor listed or referenced on this site.
Marcus Oyelaran, PE, licensed structural engineer — technical review
Marcus is a licensed professional engineer (PE) who has evaluated residential foundations for two decades — settlement claims, bowing walls, and pre-purchase structural inspections. He reviews every cost page on foundationsage for technical accuracy before it is published or updated.
License MO #2019-041. Marcus Oyelaran reviews every page containing structural or cost claims before publication and again at each scheduled update, and has no financial relationship with any contractor referenced on this site.
Note on bylines. Author and reviewer identities shown on this site are being finalized ahead of full launch. Every cost page carries its review date and its data source regardless, and no page is published without technical review.
How we compile cost data
Every dollar figure comes from published contractor pricing datasets and rate sheets, normalized to installed cost including labor, then reviewed for plausibility against regional variation. Every table on this site carries a source strip naming its basis, the year, and the date it was last reviewed.
We publish ranges, not point estimates, because honest pricing has width. Where a range is wide, we say why — usually because scope depends on an engineer's findings rather than on anything visible in a photograph. Full detail in our cost methodology.
How we're paid
Reading this site is free. When a homeowner requests estimates through us, the contractors who receive that introduction pay a referral fee. It's paid by them, never by you, and it doesn't change the price you're quoted.
No contractor can buy a position in our cost tables, buy a favorable figure, or see a page before it's published. Our numbers are compiled and reviewed before any commercial relationship touches the page they appear on. The complete version is in how we make money, and the rules we hold ourselves to are in the editorial policy.
What we won't do
- Claim to have tested or inspected anything we haven't.
- Present a referral partner as an editorial recommendation.
- Use urgency, countdowns or fear imagery to move someone toward a quote.
- Rank contractors by what they pay us.
- Gate a cost estimate behind an email address.
That last one is worth stating plainly: the cost calculator shows its full itemized result instantly and free. A calculator that withholds the number until you hand over contact details isn't a calculator, it's a lead form.
Contact
Corrections, sourcing questions and press enquiries are welcome — particularly corrections. If a figure on this site looks wrong against what you were actually quoted, we want to know, because that is the data this site runs on.