Lafayette Foundation Co. covers Lafayette, Acadia, St. Landry, St. Martin and Vermilion parishes on one rate card. The site visit — floor levels and a hand-augered hole — is free everywhere, and the written findings are yours regardless.
Four kinds of ground, not five parishes
Textbook prairie
The Albaqualf profile at its most straightforward: silty top, dense clay at about fourteen inches, and no relief to shed water into. Crowley gave the soil series its name. What varies between these towns is not the ground but how easy it is to find somewhere to send the water.
Crowley · Rayne · Church Point
Prairie under development
The same profile with a great deal of new roofing and paving added on top of it. Development concentrates runoff onto ground that already cannot absorb what it gets, and the properties that notice are frequently the older ones downhill rather than the new ones.
Broussard · Youngsville · Carencro
Bayou and alluvium
Ground laid down by water rather than formed in place, which means layered and inconsistent rather than the uniform prairie profile. At Maurice the regional water table also rises, which is a different problem from perching and responds differently to a drain.
Higher ground
North into St. Landry there is genuine relief, and relief is what the rest of this region lacks. Perched water has somewhere to go, so the regional mechanism carries less of the blame and causes are more often specific to one property.
How the ground shifts across the region
| Ground | What we check first | Common finding |
|---|---|---|
| Textbook prairie | Where the water can possibly be sent | Discharge design is harder than the trench |
| Prairie under development | What was built upstream and which way it falls | Water arriving that did not use to |
| Bayou alluvium | What the auger actually finds | Layered ground; the regional profile may not apply |
| Low ground south | Whether it is perched or a high water table | Sometimes drainage has less to offer, and we say so |
| Higher ground north | What is specific to this property | A local cause, usually cheaper to fix |
The same free visit everywhere
Floor levels across the plan, a hand-augered hole, and a walk of the outside to see where water stands and where it could go. The numbers live on the cost guide, and an appointment takes a minute to arrange.
Asked about coverage
Do you charge extra to reach Church Point or Opelousas?
Not at all. One rate card covers all five parishes and the drive stays on our side of the ledger. If another bid climbs the further out you live, that journey went into one of their lines and they can point at it.
Why group towns by drainage rather than by parish?
Because drainage is the mechanism. A property on textbook prairie at Rayne and one on Teche alluvium at St. Martinville face different ground entirely, and no parish boundary marks the difference between them.
How do I know which group I am in?
The augered hole settles it in ten minutes, and it is part of the free visit. The groups describe tendencies; your own lot is the only thing that describes your lot, particularly around Carencro where the prairie starts changing.
Book a free Lafayette site visit
The single most useful thing you can tell us is what your yard does after heavy rain — whether water stands, for how long, and in which corner. On this ground that observation narrows the diagnosis further than any description of a crack. Say whether the house is raised or on a slab too. Reply the same working day.