WOW Construction Group — Los AngelesConstructionGroup

Foundation Retrofit in Los Angeles

Shake All You Want. It's Bolted Down.

Earthquake retrofits, foundation repair and replacement across Los Angeles — engineered, permitted and inspected, so the next quake is somebody else's problem.

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Foundation Retrofit in Los Angeles by WOW Construction Group
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Your options

Your Foundation Retrofit Options

Soft-Story / Cripple Wall Bracing

Plywood shear panels on the short walls under your first floor — the #1 reason older LA homes slide off their base.

Foundation Bolting

Anchor bolts and foundation plates tying the mudsill to the concrete. The classic pre-1980 house fix.

Steel Hold-Downs & Framing

Hold-downs, straps and custom steel moment frames where an engineer calls for real muscle.

Grade Beams & Caissons

Hillside and canyon lots: drilled piers and grade beams that reach solid ground.

Raised Foundation Repair

Rotted mudsills, sagging girders, failing piers and posts replaced from the crawl space up.

Slab Foundation Work

Slab crack repair, underpinning and full foundation replacement when repair isn't honest anymore.

Soft-Story Apartment Retrofit

LA Ordinance 183893 compliance for tuck-under-parking buildings — plans, permits, construction, sign-off.

Drainage & Waterproofing

French drains, vapor barriers and grading, because water is what killed the last foundation.

What’s included

  • Seismic retrofitting
  • Soft-story retrofit
  • Foundation retrofit
Our promise

What We Lock In Before Day One

Engineered, not guessed

Every retrofit is designed by a licensed structural engineer for your specific framing, soil and slope — no cookie-cutter bolt count.

Permitted always

Unpermitted structural work is worthless at resale and to your insurer. We pull the permit and get the inspection card signed.

Fixed price before we crawl in

You get a written scope and number after inspection. Surprises only happen if we open a wall and find damage — and you approve that in writing first.

Your house stays livable

Most of this happens under your floor. You keep living upstairs, and we keep the crawl space cleaner than we found it.

Lot to keys

How The Build Actually Goes

Six stages, no mystery. We map the timeline to your project and your city's permit requirements before work begins.

  1. Stage 01

    Crawl-space inspection

    We get under the house, photograph the mudsill, piers, posts and foundation, and tell you plainly what's failing and what's fine.

  2. Stage 02

    Engineering & plans

    A licensed structural engineer produces a stamped retrofit plan — bolt spacing, shear panel layout, hold-down schedule.

  3. Stage 03

    Permits

    We file with LADBS or your city. Standard plan-set retrofits often move fast; hillside and soft-story take longer.

  4. Stage 04

    Retrofit construction

    Bolting, bracing, hold-downs, new concrete where needed. Typically 3–10 days on a single-family home.

  5. Stage 05

    City inspection

    Inspector verifies bolt spacing, nailing pattern and hardware. We meet them on site and get the card signed.

  6. Stage 06

    Documentation handoff

    Permit, stamped plans and photo record — everything your insurer, appraiser and future buyer will ask for.

Why bother

What You Get Out Of It

  • Free crawl-space inspection with photos of what's actually down there
  • Licensed structural engineer stamps every plan set
  • City permits and inspections handled start to finish
  • May qualify for the CEA Brace + Bolt grant (up to $3,000)
  • Often lowers earthquake insurance premiums
  • Most single-family retrofits done in 3–10 days
  • Costs a fraction of rebuilding a red-tagged house
1948 house, never bolted. They crawled under, showed me photos of the mudsill, gave me a number and finished in five days. The inspector signed off the same week and my insurance dropped.
Daniel R. — Highland Park
Ballpark budgets

What It Usually Runs

Real ranges from recent LA jobs so you know where you stand before we ever walk the property. Your exact number comes from a site visit.

City permit fees are not included in project prices or cost estimates. They are separate costs based on what the city charges for your project. WOW processes all permits for every project so clients don't have to worry, and we provide the city fee receipts for their control.

Bolt-only retrofit

$4,000–$8,000

Standard-plan bolting on a small, accessible crawl space with no cripple walls.

Bolting + cripple wall bracing

$8,000–$25,000

The most common LA job: anchor bolts, plywood shear panels and hold-downs on a typical single-family home.

Structural / hillside / soft-story

$30,000–$150,000+

Steel moment frames, caissons, grade beams, underpinning or full foundation replacement. Permit fees separate.

FAQ

Questions People Actually Ask

If it was built before 1980 on a raised foundation, probably. Homes from the 1920s–1970s were rarely bolted to their foundations, and unbraced cripple walls are the single most common failure in California earthquakes. A free crawl-space inspection settles it in 30 minutes.

The short wall between your foundation and the first floor — usually 1 to 4 feet tall. Unbraced, it folds sideways in a quake and the house drops off its foundation. Braced with plywood shear panels, it holds.

Most single-family homes land between $4,000 and $25,000 depending on crawl-space access, cripple wall height and how much of the perimeter needs work. Hillside caissons, steel frames and soft-story apartment retrofits run considerably higher.

Typical single-family retrofit: 3–10 working days on site. Engineering and permitting add a couple of weeks up front. Hillside and soft-story jobs run longer.

Yes. Structural retrofits require a permit and inspection in every LA-area city. We handle the filing and meet the inspector. Unpermitted retrofit work will not help you at resale or with your insurer.

The Earthquake Brace + Bolt program offers grants up to $3,000 for qualifying homeowners in eligible ZIP codes, and low-income supplemental grants can go higher. We'll tell you if your address qualifies and work with the program's documentation requirements.

Often yes — the California Earthquake Authority offers a hazard-reduction discount of up to 25% on qualifying retrofitted homes. We give you the permit and documentation your carrier asks for.

Almost never. The work happens in the crawl space or on the garage cripple walls. You'll hear drilling and a compressor during the day, and that's about it.

A multi-unit building with tuck-under parking or large ground-floor openings and little shear wall. LA Ordinance 183893 requires those buildings to be retrofitted. We do the engineering, permits and steel frame installation for owners under compliance orders.

Hairline shrinkage cracks are usually cosmetic. Cracks wider than a quarter inch, cracks with vertical displacement, sticking doors and sloping floors are not. We inspect, and if it's cosmetic we'll tell you to save your money.

Repair whenever it's honest — underpinning, pier and post replacement, mudsill swaps. Full replacement only when the concrete has failed throughout. We show you the photos and explain which one you're looking at.

Yes. Hillside lots need drilled caissons, grade beams and hillside-ordinance review. It's a big share of what we do in the Hollywood Hills, Silver Lake, Echo Park and the foothills.

Yes — retrofits qualify for our financing options, with soft-pull pre-qualification that doesn't affect your credit score.

Not necessarily. A soft-story retrofit addresses a structurally vulnerable story, while foundation retrofit work focuses on the foundation and its connections. Seismic retrofitting may involve either or both, depending on the building and the engineer's assessment.
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Recent Projects

Second Story Addition

Sherman Oaks · 2025

Where we do this

Foundation Retrofit across Los Angeles County

Foundation Retrofit takes a beating differently across LA: salt air on the coast, brutal summer sun in the Valley, and wind-driven rain in the South Bay. We spec materials for the block you actually live on.

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