Anyone Ever Move a Hoouse? (Questions)

I have a 4 square 1910 house I would like to move a couple hundred feet. It came with the farm and honestly is not in bad shape, but unless I do something in a year or two, it is going to fall into disrepair. We figured if we can stick it onto our current home we would be more motivated to fix it up, as well as give us some additional room.

It would be a 400 foot move, level ground, all on land I own. I got a skidder, bulldozer, and farm tractor and plenty of woods for skids, bracing and blocking.

I have moved a few outbuildings and barns so I know it is easier than it looks, but never a 2 story house. I was curious if I could do it myself or what it would cost to have it done?

This is a nice photo because it shows I have done some building moving in the past, but also the house to be moved in the background.

 

Look to Norway



Never done it myself, but it looks super exciting! Do keep us posted.

 

One local contractor moved a small house "just to get out of the way" enough to put in a crawl space.

Distance was maybe 80-100 feet also on level ground and with all the toys you would need for the moving....almost lost it. If it's important, hire someone. If you're just trying it out, be careful.

 

friend from high school jacked and moved houses.. assume you are doing this your self..

can we get a better pic of house... gut instinct I helped on a few by no means an expert

1 porches are a pain.. cut loose and reattach later...
2 that brick chimney is it inside oe outside? brick and mortar doesn't handle vibrations well
3 romove windows re install later
4 go slow I mean really slow.. like a foot every couple of minutes

 

To the south of me use to be an old mill town. The mill caught on fire; this was way back when, and they were unable to put the fire out and the mill burned to the ground. The owners of the mill decided to not rebuild and the town was without a source of income. Since there was a nearby town with a mill the townsfolk decided to move their houses to that town. The houses were moved on large wooden rollers and mules were used to move the houses. They used a set of rollers and when the house moved forward so far, rollers left behind were then moved to the front. If people of old with only mules as a power source could do it, I don't see why you can't do it.
Do research, planning and I bet you can get it done. Hiring a moving company to do it will probably be what, $5K?
If you were not so far away, this is the kind of project I would like to be involved in.

 

Kim...I figured 10 grand...but that is just a guess. Then I watched a HGTV show moving Lawrence Guthrie's house being moved and the cost was $70,000 for a 550 foot move. I was like whoa.....

What we are really hoping that by having a new house attached onto ours (separate kitchen, living room, bedrooms, etc, but share utilities and heat), we can take in battered woman. We have actually done this before in the past and it worked well. Where we live it kind of works because we are so rural that it is safe place to stay...in other words hard to find. We have a deputy sheriff friend that is the area domestic violence officer and he knows that he can just bring them here, but we have lost out on a few people we could have helped in part because they would have had to live in our house as opposed to an attached apartment of sorts.

That is our ultimate goal...if we could just move it!

 

I have found that HGTV and all the shows tend to exaggerate everything. They have plenty of money to burn through and so will go to extremes on everything, including paying 70 grand to move a house.

OK, this is an important project. Maybe you can do it through a sort of GTG for moving the house. Having enough hands is going to be important.

Why do you want to attach it to your house? Could you just renovate the house where it is? Or is it important that it be attached to your house?

 

Have you had a look under the house yet?

 

If that is just an enclosed porch on the side, I would remove it and not worry about trying to move it with the house.

 

Did not go well

 

Encouragement, man, encouragement. We need to give encouragement.

 

You seem pretty handy and clever...I bet you can DIY it.
Just need some big hydraulic or screw jacks (20 ton?) and a whole bunch of cribbing timbers...and I think you already have all the heavy equipment you'll need.
I'd get everything cut loose and get some large timbers or I-beams under it (that span the foundation) and then I wonder if you couldn't roll it on a bunch of round posts...like electric (phone) poles. Kinda like how you would move heavy machinery across a factory floor...on a bunch of pipes for "wheels"...and then leap frog the pipes (poles) as you go...make sense? Just spit ballin here...

 

brenndatomu that is exactly how they move them.. depending on how the house is built.. we would sometimes put a steel I beam down middle to carry the load bearing wall.. 10 Or so 20 ton bottle Jacks so 1 pump next jack in a circle.. keep on cribbing

 

I've seen a few houses and barns moved by a pro...but they had fancy...ah..."trolleys" to roll on...figured ole LT could come up with some wood beams and poles...even if ya had to mill 'em (the beams)

 

yeah those are the guys that charge big bucks... I think Jim charged under 10k.. a lot were on the lake and needed new septic so the moved camps back x number of feet to be ok.. as regs would not let you rebuild but you could move an then do an addition to make a summer camp year round..


I was usually the dummy go jack all Jacks 1 pump clockwise in order

 

Yes, see my earlier post about moving houses with wooden rollers and mules way back when. Don't see why that would not work today. Slow and easy.

 

I had a price of $4500 just to lift our house.
My plan was to jack it up 2+ feet and make a full height basement. Block, plumbing and electric work was all on me.

 

What a great project! Lots of luck with it. Like many here, I've watched several shows on the topic; but I also got to see one done live. Considering that the building is 2 story and you really want it to survive, I'd be hesitant to just wing it. The lifting of the house, cribbing it, etc. wasn't the hard part, although everything had to be done at exactly the same time and lifted at the same rate. It's keeping everything perfectly level and keep the load from rocking while moving that's the difficult part. They had some sort of automated leveling on the machinery, like a load leveling suspension on a pickup truck bed. It was a very slow process, actually losing a race to paint drying..
If it was a shed, I'd say go for it. I'd hate for you to update that the house fell apart because of some unknown variable or because Mr. Murphy and his dang law showed up. Again, great idea and I wish you the best in getting the project done!