Raising a footing moves everything fixed to the walls above it, including drain lines that have been sitting in their settled position for years. A plumbing test after the lift is the way that gets caught, and it is worth agreeing to before the work.

The reason a Kansas City leak test is worth doing first

Two local facts make the pre-test worth its cost here. The median house here dates from 1968, which is old enough that the original drain material is worth establishing before anything is lifted. And the largest soil mapped here is hydrologic group C/D, the rating of how readily water leaves it, so a leak below the floor can keep the ground beside a footing wet — which means a leak can be the cause of the movement rather than a consequence of the repair.

The reasoning behind that

Drain lines have no flexibility to spare. They were installed level, the house moved, and they have been sitting in the moved position long enough for the joints to accept it. Restoring the house toward its original elevation asks those joints to move again, and a line that runs from a wall that is lifted into a basement floor that is not takes the whole difference at one joint. Sometimes the pipe was already compromised and the lift reveals it rather than causing it. That distinction matters commercially and it is almost impossible to settle after the fact, which is the argument for a pre-work test as well as a post-work one. A static or hydrostatic test isolates the drain system and holds water in it to see whether the level falls. Run before and after, the pair establishes what changed. Run only afterwards, it establishes a problem with no agreed starting point. Ask for both, in writing, as part of the scope. Any firm that has done this work before will expect the question and many will offer it unprompted.

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