Texas Residential Foundations Guidelines

Residential Foundations Guidelines

The Texas Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers is pleased to provide the following documents:

Recommended Practice for the Design of Residential Foundations (adopted October 2007)
Guidelines for the Evaluation and Repair of Residential Foundations Ver. 3 (adopted April 2022)

On January 8, 2005, the Executive Committee voted to provide these Texas Residential Foundations Guidelines at no cost. The guidelines can be downloaded using the links above.

The Texas Section welcomes comments on these guidelines. An online comment form will be available soon.

These documents grew from the response of many members to the residential foundation Policy Advisory issued by TBPE in 1998. Many ASCE practitioners expressed the opinion that technical guidelines, such as the Policy Advisory, should be created by a technical society such as ASCE rather than by the TBPE. The guidelines are meant to provide TBPE with guidance in their evaluation of complaints against engineers practicing residential foundation engineering. Two Texas Section committees composed entirely of Professional Engineers began work on these guidelines in 1999. The Guidelines were originally adopted in October 2002 with a January 1, 2003, effective date. The most recent guidelines (Version 3) have been adopted with an effective date of April 1, 2022.

These guidelines are not intended to be Standards but are guidelines only. They reflect the engineering opinions and practices of the committee members. They in no way replace the basic need for good engineering judgment based on appropriate education, experience, wisdom, and ethics in any particular engineering application. Thus, they are primarily suited as an aid for engineers.