To cut a long story short, the scheduled date for the house lifting, August 10th, came and went without any action. Between 3 different house lifters, I had chosen the cheapest bid; it turned out this lifter was unreliable, didn't return phone calls in a timely manner and was all in all a time waster. Just goes to show that the cheapest bid isn't always the cheapest bid when you take time, effort and energy into account. The
second cheapest bid was a completely different story!
Solares House Lifters were very responsive, reliable and complete professionals.
The new lifting date was scheduled for today, August 23rd. The men arrived at around 7am.
They started by stacking logs to form pillars from in front of the house on the left hand side, continuing through the house to the back; they repeated the process on the right hand side of the house.
Once the pillars have been built, the truck's hydraulic arm is used to hoist one of the 40 foot long metal I-beams off the flat bed. It is swung around with the help of the house lifters.
After the beam is lined up with the pillars, temporary rollers are placed on top of each pillar to help slide the beam into place underneath the second floor's joists.
Once right-hand side (through the front staircase) beam was slid into place, the process was repeaded on the left hand side, through the front window.
The next stage of the house lifting is to place 22 ton jacks on top of each pillar, under the I-beam. The house lifters then proceed to slowly lift the house, the amount determined by previous measurements using a laser level. In this particular case, the front left hand side of the house was the high point and the right rear end was the low point. At this stage of the lifting process the lift ranged from 0.25 inches to about 2 inches.
Because the back of the house needed to be lifted more than the rest of the house, two 22 ton jacks were used on the rears pillars. I was told by the Solares team that my house weighs around 150 tons (redwood is particularly heavy). I have to say that I was surprised by just how small these jacks were!
During the lifting process, the house lifters would stop from time to time to measure how much they had lifted the house and to shore up their positions by wedging in smaller pieces of wood.
Once the lifting process was complete the house lifters packed up their jacks and left. All in all they were at the site about 6 hours. The contractors working on my project wasted no time removing the remaining floor joists and knocking out the dry-rotted sill plates around the perimeter of the house.
The Solares crew will be back in a few weeks once the rear porch has been completely removed to rebalance and completely level the house. We have been waiting for San Francisco's building department to approve the deck's removal (a response is expected by then). If all goes according to plan, the house will be lowered in 2.5 months when the new concrete slab is in place.
Now that the house has been lifted, the workers are in the process of knocking down the existing brick foundation. This involves a lot of digging. The quality of dirt our house sits on can essentially be described as beach sand. It was because of this (and the poor quality of the mortar between the bricks) that resulted in our decision to undergo the expensive process of replacing the foundation with a concrete slab. Once all of the existing brick foundation has been dug out and removed, the contractor will build a perimeter form around the house into which a new concrete footing will be poured. Once that is done the contractor will begin work for the new slab. The house is expected to remain lifted for about 10 weeks.
