A specialist walks your home inside and out, documents the cracks and symptoms, measures floor elevations with a manometer or laser level and wall deflection with a string line, identifies the likely cause and water sources, and explains options. For structural work, a licensed engineer then produces a stamped report before any fixed quote.
More detail
A foundation inspection should be a diagnostic visit, not a sales pitch, and ours is structured to actually figure out what is happening. The specialist starts with a full walk-through, inside and out: documenting every relevant crack (location, direction, width, whether it is growing), checking doors and windows for racking, looking at the chimney, and examining the basement walls and slab. Then come the measurements that turn observation into diagnosis: floor elevations mapped across the house with a manometer (a precise water-level tool) or a laser level to quantify how much and where the foundation has settled, and wall deflection measured with a string line or level to quantify how far a bowing wall has moved. Just as important, the specialist looks for the cause and especially the water sources, downspout discharge points, grading that slopes toward the house, signs of past or active basement water, because in Cincinnati water is almost always part of the story and the repair has to address it. From all of that, the specialist explains what is cosmetic versus structural, what the likely cause is, and what the repair options are. For genuinely structural work, the next step is a licensed Professional Engineer, who reviews the findings, may visit, and produces a stamped report specifying the cause and the engineered fix, before we issue a fixed-price proposal. That sequence (inspect, measure, engineer, then fixed written quote) is the standard a homeowner should expect. We are also clear when the answer is "this is cosmetic, monitor it, you do not need us yet," because not every crack needs a repair and an inspection that finds nothing structural is a successful inspection.