Most of Houston sits on Beaumont clay, one of the most expansive soils in the country. It swells when it rains and shrinks hard when it doesn’t. A wet spring followed by an August drought can move the ground under your slab by several inches — and your foundation has no choice but to follow.

Add the groundwater subsidence that affects west Houston and Fort Bend County, and you get the pattern we see every week: doors that stick in summer and swing free in winter, hairline cracks above window corners, a slab that reads level in one room and an inch off in the next.

This is not a defect in your house. It’s the ground. But it does not correct itself, and the longer a slab sits out of level, the more it takes to bring back — cracked plumbing under the slab, separated brick veneer, racked door frames.