What are foundation conditions like in Moore, Oklahoma?

Reviewed by Preston · Updated 2026-11-11

In short: About half of Moore, 50%, is mapped in soils rated high shrink-swell, the most of any Oklahoma City-area city measured, and only about 2% rates low ¹. Renfrow and Kirkland clays cover more than a third of the city ¹. With almost no poorly drained soil, Moore's foundation movement is driven by clay swelling after wet spells and shrinking in drought.

How much of Moore has expansive soil?

Moore covers about 22 square miles ², all in the Cleveland County soil survey ¹.

Which Moore soils matter most for houses?

• Renfrow, about 20% of the city, is deep and well drained, formed from clayey Permian shale on low hills; below about 13 inches it is clay, with seasonal cracks, slickensides and a high linear extensibility ³.
• Kirkland, about 18%, is very deep, on old stream terraces, with a dense clay subsoil of 35 to 60 percent clay and slickensides ⁴.
• Port, Oklahoma's state soil, is a deep, well drained floodplain soil that floods occasionally or frequently for very brief periods between March and October ⁵.
• Grainola is moderately deep and well drained, formed from Permian shale on summits and backslopes of low hills ⁶. Norge is a less clayey terrace soil ⁷.

What does so much clay mean for Moore houses?

On clay this expansive, the soil under a slab edge swells after wet weather and shrinks in drought, and uneven wetting does more harm than uniform change ⁸. Typical results are perimeter heave, edge drop during drought and tree-root drying. The ASCE homeowner guide recommends keeping sprinkler lines at least 5 feet from the foundation, watering next to all sides of it, and planting trees farther from the house than their mature height ⁸.

Which soils cover Moore?

ZIP codes in Moore

ZIP 73160

Looking for a foundation company near Moore?

Companies that serve Moore can appear on the company map in the Homeowner Hub. Paid listings there are marked Sponsored; the library and the AI guide don't rank or recommend any of them.

Buying or selling a house in Moore? Realtors who serve the area can be on the same map, also marked Sponsored, and for realtors covers the seller disclosure form, inspections and the sale timeline. Seeing cracks at home? Start with for homeowners.

How were these numbers measured?

We overlaid the city's current limits from the Census Bureau ² on the USDA soil survey's map units ¹ and added up the area of each soil. Where a map unit is a mix of soils, its area was split by the percentages the survey lists for its major soils, so the shares above leave out minor inclusions and do not add to 100%. A soil counts as high, moderate or low shrink-swell by the linear extensibility of its most expansive layer, the survey's measure of how much a soil changes length between wet and dry (6% or more is rated high). Water table, bedrock and flooding come from the survey's map-unit summaries: the shallowest water table in any month, the shallowest bedrock, and the most common flooding frequency. Bedrock here includes soft, weathered sandstone and shale that a pier can push through, so it is not the depth where piers stop. These are mapped averages for the whole city, not a test of any one lot. Fill, grading and the soil actually under a house can differ, which is why a site visit or soil boring still decides a repair.

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