Falls County, TX Shrink-Swell Risk

What Falls County, TX's soil means for a foundation

High

USDA's SSURGO data puts Falls County, TX's soil at "High" shrink-swell potential, an area-weighted linear extensibility of 7.93% across 42.3% of the county's surveyed land. Ground like this needs active moisture control to keep a conventional foundation from cracking - it's not automatic either way.

This is a county figure, not a lot figure

USDA's survey covers the whole of Falls County, TX at once, not any single address. The real answer for one lot is still a site-specific geotechnical report, running about $1,000-$5,000 (typically near $2,700).

Report cost vs. repair cost

Falls County's soil reading is exactly the case where a report before construction, or before cracks widen, pays for itself. The report ($1,000-$5,000) is what tells you whether Falls County's county-level reading applies to your lot; the repair ($5,000-$15,000) is what it costs if you skip that and find out from the cracks instead.

Falls County's rank among Texas counties

Nationally, Falls County, TX is the 58-most-constrained of 3,085 rated counties for shrink-swell soil. Within Texas alone it ranks 14 of 253. The county spans 765 square miles, home to 17,752 people.

See how another county compares

Orleans Parish, LA carries this site's most-constrained reading. Butler County, KY and Brooks County, GA are worth a look for comparison.

How this reading is built, and its real limits · The warning signs of expansive-clay damage, explained

More of Texas

Every county in Texas is on this site, including Blanco County, TX and Cherokee County, TX. The full underlying dataset is downloadable directly, one row per county.