Hawthorne Torrance Concrete lifts settled houses in Torrance, jacked from the crawl space of a bungalow or piered through the slab of a postwar tract. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
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How a house is lifted here
A house is lifted from wherever its weight can be reached, and in Torrance the year it was built decides where that is. A bungalow around El Prado stands on a crawl space, so the jacks go under the sill and the perimeter is repoured in bays while the house rests on cribbing. A 1950s tract house sits on a slab with no space beneath it, so steel piers are driven beside the footing and the slab is lifted from above on brackets. Both come back level. The way in is what differs.
Hawthorne Torrance Concrete was founded in 2017 by Kenji Okamoto, who put in 19 years on South Bay foundation and flatwork crews first, and he sets the survey level himself before a jack is placed. The lift is to the elevations he shot, wall by wall, in eighths of an inch, and the crew stops at the reading rather than at the point where the door swings freely, because a house lifted past level cracks somewhere new, and the second crack is the one nobody was watching for.
Underpinning is engineered work. A California-licensed engineer stamps the pier layout, the City's Community Development Department issues the permit, and the inspector sees the piers at bearing and the new footing's steel before either is covered. The work is done under our CSLB C-8 license with the California Contractors State License Board, with liability insurance on every job, and carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Read the house
The first sign is a bedroom door that swings shut, or open, when nobody touches it, because the frame has leaned with the wall it hangs on. A house on the flat Torrance plain has no slope to blame for that. Plane the door and it drifts again inside a year, since the wall still moves.
Stucco cracks in a stair pattern from the corner of a window or door toward the ground, because the opening is the weakest point in the wall and settlement finds it first. One crack is a house adjusting. The same crack at both ends of one wall and nowhere else is a footing dropping.
On a 1950s slab home the floor tells it. A line of cracked tiles or a ridge under the vinyl runs where the slab has hinged, a few feet from a wall that has gone down, and a level across it shows the fall. Fill the crack and the ridge grows, because the slab is bending over a void.
Under an older house the wood sill sits on the concrete perimeter, and a gap opening between them means the footing has dropped away from the frame and the posts alone carry the house. Water and termites come in through it. This one is booked first, because the floor moves next.
In every lift
Eight things are in every lift at no separate line, and each one answers something this city's houses do. They settle at one wall rather than all four, stand over a crawl space or on a slab according to their year, and hide the leak that started it.
Every room is shot with a rotating laser and the readings drawn on a plan, so the lift has a target and the walk-through has a record.
A dropped footing on the plain has a reason, usually water. The lateral, the hose bibs and the downspouts are tested before anything lifts.
A bungalow is entered from below and the sill exposed. A slab house has the floor cored beside the footing at each pier position.
Steel piers go down beside the footing until they refuse under the load, which on the plain is the firm loam under the wet top layer.
The jacks are worked together in small steps against the laser, the house watched at every window head, and stopped at level.
Where the old perimeter is crumbling it is repoured in short bays on rebar, tied to the piers, and the sill bolted down to it.
Cored slab is patched flush, the crawl space vents and skirting go back, and stucco cracks are filled once the house has stood a week.
You get the before and after readings for every room, the engineer's drawing, and the written guarantee before we leave the house.
Ways to lift
Four methods to bring a settled house back to level, set against what stands on the footing and what the ground under it is doing. The survey and the permit are the same in all four, so the table is about the pier and the lift alone.
| Option | Suits | Reaches | Lift it gives | Back in use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steel push piers | A slab tract house on the plain | Firm loam, 15 to 30 feet down | Full lift, 1 to 4 inches | Same day, nobody moves out |
| Helical piers | A light bungalow over a crawl space | Screwed to torque, 10 to 25 feet | Full lift, set by torque | Same day, from the crawl space |
| Poured underpinning | A 1920s perimeter that is crumbling | Pits dug 3 to 5 feet under the footing | Holds level, lifts little | Cured 7 days before the load |
| Foam slab lifting | A garage or patio slab, not a house | The void under the slab only | Up to 2 inches, slab only | Walk on it in 15 minutes |
Push piers cost the most to set and are the ones nobody comes back to. Foam is the least to set and holds only while the ground stays put, which on clay it does not.
Ground and age
Two things decide a lift here, and both are read off the house before the ground. The year built, 1920s bungalow or 1950s tract, fixes the way in. Plain or Palos Verdes slope fixes why it moved.
Old Torrance was laid out in 1912 to the Olmsted plan, and the bungalows on the curved streets around El Prado went up through the 1920s on raised floors over a crawl space, on a perimeter poured shallow with little steel. Where that perimeter has dropped it has usually crumbled too, so a lift there is a repour as well, done from underneath with the family in the house. The 1950s tracts of West and North Torrance went down on a slab, lifted from above through cores beside the footing.
Why it moved is the other reading. On the plain the loam does not swell, so a wall that has gone down there went down because water carried the sand out from under it, from a cracked lateral, a hose bib or a downspout set onto an apron, and the leak is fixed first or the same wall drops again. On the Riviera and in Walteria the clay cycles with the season, so a pier is driven through it to what lies below. Where the perimeter is replaced outright we pour the new footings with the lift.
From survey to level
Five stages, the same crew at each, and the person who shoots the survey is the person on the jacks. The engineer's drawing and the City permit are in hand before anything under the house is touched.
Kenji Okamoto shoots every room with a laser, opens the crawl space or cores the slab, tests the lateral and writes the figure before he goes.
The pier layout is stamped by the engineer, the building permit filed with the City, and the week set once the leak that started it is repaired.
The sill is exposed or the slab cored at each pier, and steel is driven beside the footing until it refuses under the house's own weight.
Jacks are worked in eighths against the survey readings and locked at level, then any crumbling perimeter is repoured in bays and bolted.
Cores patched flush, vents and skirting back, stucco filled after a week, and the before and after readings handed to you on the walk-through.
Behind the number
The pier count starts the figure and the old footing finishes it. Two houses dropped the same inch can be days apart once the crawl space is open, so nothing is quoted from a photograph. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
One wall down on a slab is 4 to 6 piers and a day of coring and patching, and the leak that dropped it is the line on the estimate that moves.
Two or more kitchens over one footing mean more laterals to test and more weight on each pier, so the pier count rises with the number of units.
A 1920s perimeter that has crumbled is repoured in bays with the lift, and the length of bad footing, not the drop, sets that part of the figure.
Clay on the hill means piers driven deeper to what lies under it and a drain behind the uphill wall, so depth per pier moves the figure there.
The survey and the written figure cost nothing, and the call that books a time for them comes within 1 business day. (424) 484-9860 or send us a message.
Send the form or call, and someone rings back within 1 business day to fix a time. Kenji Okamoto shoots the floors, opens the crawl space and writes the figure at your house, and it is yours whether or not you book.
Houses we lifted
Three reviews left on Google, Facebook and the BBB, each about a lift rather than a slab or a wall, and each naming how far the house had dropped or how the crew reached it.
“Our 1924 house off El Prado had a gap you could see daylight through between the sill and the footing on the north side. They jacked it from the crawl space, repoured that whole wall in sections and bolted the sill down. We slept in the house every night of it and the doors close now.”
“The back wall of our 1956 house had gone down an inch and a half and the kitchen tile had cracked in a line. Kenji Okamoto found the lateral leaking under the slab, had it fixed, then set five piers and brought the wall up to the laser reading. The floor is flat.”
“Our house in the Hollywood Riviera dropped at the downhill corner every winter and the slider bound at the top. They drove piers right through the clay to something solid and put a drain behind the wall above it. Two wet winters since and the slider runs with one finger.”
Before you book
What moves the figure, how long the house is on jacks, what the City permits, what the guarantee covers and whether you have to move out, answered for a house on a lot here.
The number of piers and the state of the footing they carry, more than how far the house has dropped. A slab house with one wall down on the plain is a short row of piers and a day of coring. A bungalow whose perimeter has crumbled as it dropped needs that footing repoured in bays as it is lifted, and the length of bad footing sets that part. Both are measured at the house and written down before we leave.
One to three days, and it is never left hanging overnight. Piers are driven one day, the lift itself takes a morning worked in eighths of an inch, and any repoured footing cures under the load for a week with the jacks locked off. The family stays in the house throughout, since the lift is small and slow enough that a glass of water on the counter does not spill. Coring and patching a slab adds a day at each end.
Yes, the testing does. The lateral, the hose bibs and the downspouts are tested on the survey visit and written into the figure, because a pier set under a wall that is still being washed out is a pier loaded twice. What sits outside the figure is named at the visit rather than added later, which is the plumber's repair of the line itself and stucco work above the wall once it has stood a week.
Yes, always. Underpinning changes what holds the house up, so the City's Community Development Department issues a building permit against a pier layout stamped by a California-licensed engineer, and the inspector sees the piers at bearing and the steel in any new footing before either is covered. We have the drawing made, file the permit and meet the inspector, and a buyer asks for that permit at the sale.
Usually not, and the exception is worth a phone call. Policies here treat settlement and earth movement as excluded, so a wall that has gone down over twenty years of lawn watering is the owner's to lift. What is often covered is the water damage from a sudden burst line under the slab, which can include getting to the line, and that is the case to put to your carrier. Photograph the cracks and the floor first.
How it was built, meaning the piers driven to refusal, the new footing's depth and steel, the bolting and the patch, with the before and after readings printed beside the terms on the estimate you sign. It is a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built. A new leak, a tree root, or ground moving past what the piers were set for sit outside it. Where the fault is ours we put it right.
Galvanized steel push piers driven in 3-foot sections through a bracket bolted to the footing until they refuse under the house's own weight, or helical piers screwed to a set torque under a lighter bungalow. A repoured perimeter is 3,000 psi ready-mix on number 4 rebar, with the sill bolted to it on anchor bolts. The pier type, the bracket and the mix are named on the estimate, so what goes in can be checked.
No. The lift is a fraction of an inch at a time and the house is never off its supports, so the family, the furniture and the kitchen stay where they are. What the crew needs is the crawl space hatch clear, the cars off the drive for the pier truck, and the rooms along the wall being lifted emptied of anything on a high shelf. Coring a slab is loud for a morning, and that morning is on the schedule you get.
Towns we lift in
The eight nearest towns on the coverage list, with the straight-line distance from the office on Hawthorne Boulevard beside each. Every lift is surveyed at the house before a figure is written.
Four jobs that tend to be booked with a lift or found necessary during one, by the same crew, on the same engineer's drawing where it needs one, and itemized on the one written estimate.
The new perimeter under a lifted bungalow, poured in bays on rebar and bolted to the sill.
Where the old perimeter is past repouring in bays, a complete new foundation under the house.
The cores beside a slab footing and the trench for a lateral, sawn clean and patched flush.
The slab under an addition or an ADU, poured level from the start on a compacted base.
Call or send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. Say roughly when the house was built and which wall the doors stick on, and the survey can be booked for a day inside the same week.