From time to time we are called upon to perform work that is both interesting and challenging. Projects that fall into this category are; house relocations, historic restorations, and preservation

One such project was relocating a centuries old historic home onto a modern foundation. The home is balloon framed structure which makes this move a greater challenge. This beautiful historic shingle style gambrel had been located on a brick crawl space set on a rubble footing for over 120 Years.  In order to move this house successfully we first had to engineer a method of stabilizing the exterior walls. Being a balloon frame the loads are transferred directly from studs to a sole plate, this presented a problem when trying to lift the house off its existing foundation. We devised a method bind the walls together as a unit then we carefully raised the house and re-supported it on new temporary steel beam. We then lifted the entire structure and moved it. The house was carefully moved and positioned on temporary cribbage, while we needle shored and supported the entire structure so that the existing sole plate which was destroyed by termites and powder post beetles could be replaced.  We then set and poured the new 11’-0” concrete walls When the walls had cured, new sill plates were set and the house lowered on to it’s new permanent location.