Jacking up a house

[DanRB]

I have an old 2 1/2 -story wood frame house that is about 25 feet by 30 feet. In case it matters, the walls are plaster over wood lath. It has a full basement with a concrete floor, and I want to have the basement finished and make some other changes.

As part of doing that, I am thinking about: either, 1) having the house jacked straight up about 2 feet; or, 2) having the house jacked up 2 feet and moved back about 10 feet.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any rough idea of what the cost would be to have the house jacked up 2 feet, or have it jacked up 2 feet and moved back

10 feet. I'm just interested in the jack-up/moving cost, not the cost of any of the other work (disconnecting and reconnecting plumbing, electric, etc.; building up the present foundation; a new foundation if it is moved, etc.). The house is in New Jersey.

I know I could have the basement floor dug out instead of jacking up the house, but I don't want to do that. And, I know no one can really say how much it will cost without looking at it, that I should contact several house movers and ask them, etc. But, I'm just trying to get some rough ideas for now.

Thanks.

[jm44316]

I'm in the Midwest. We seriously considered jacking up our house and adding a basement under it. Prices on everything looked good, that is until we got the quote from the housemover. They wanted almost $11,000 to jack the house and garage up 36" and back down for the job.

On top of that, I had to do all the prep work, meaning digging, knocking the holes in the foundation for the beams, unbolting the house and garage from the sill, etc. All they do is jack the house, nothing more.

It was going to be a lot of work, and we weren't sure it was worth it. In the end, we decided to sell the house and build a new one. It's a LOT of hassle. I advise you to get a quote and really think about it. Anything can be done if you throw enough money at it, but sometimes it's just not worth it.

[m Ransley]

Get a bid, I dug down for a basement, to much BS in jacking up

[Joshua Putnam]

We have a 2-story wood frame house, 1640 sq ft, that we had jacked up last year to install a new foundation since the old one was seriously broken. Bids ranged from $17,000 to $60,000 for the combination of jacking it up and putting in the new foundation. The $17,000 contractor had the most experience in the field so we comfortable taking his bid, all went well. But I would expect your house to be more expensive because of the plaster, it requires more care to avoid cracking. (Our interior walls are 7/8" wood topped with painted cloth and then wallpaper, nothing to crack.)

[RicodJour]

Not to put too much of a point on it, but you're spinning your wheels asking this. As another poster mentioned, he'd gotten bids that were all over the place, and that was by contractors that eyeballed the job. NJ is also, not atypically, a rather diverse state. The quotes you'll get if your house is in Tenafly will be very different than those you'd get if your house is in a less upscale area.

Pick up the phone and call a local company. They're in business and someone calling them with a real interest won't bother them. If you explain that you're doing budgeting and need a ballpark price range you'll find some help and some real numbers.

R

[Bruce Boyd]

We had our 2400 sq ft house jacked up and set back down on a new foundation. The bids we got to raise and set the house back down were $3500 and $4200 from two different contractors. We went with the lower bid as they had more experience. The foundation and block work was a lot more than that but the cost to raise and set the house back down was very reasonable in my opinion. Our house was also plaster and lath but we were very clear that we would be removing all of the plaster and were not concerned about cracking of the walls. We are in mid Michigan and this work was done in 2004.

[TURTLE]

This is Turtle.

My Mother in Law's House was raised to 42" from 12" high. The cost in Louisiana was $5,200.00 with nothing like plumbing or electric work. Now the lift company did furnish the 42" Concrete piers for a 2,000 sq. foot house. We talk about moving it back about about 200 feet and still

42" high. It would be $3,800.00 more.

Now we live in the low cost areas of the country and we could be way low on prices. OH , We don't have ceilers or rooms under our houses for the water table is about 1 to 3 feet below the ground. A ceiler pump would be running 24/7 to keep up.

TURTLE

[Greg O]

I know a guy that raised his house and put in a new foundation and basement. Cost him $20,000 for just the lift and basement, no electric, water & sewer work. Plus the house was crooked before the lift. The new foundation was straight and level so when the house was set back down every wall cracked, some severe enough that he just gutted the house and did a total remodel, new insulation, wall board, wiring, and plumbing. When all was done he figured it would have been cheaper to build new and burn the bull doze the old house! Greg

[Chris Lewis]

According to DanRB :

Digging out the basement can have rather extreme consequences if not done absolutely right.

One 100+ year old house near where we used to live had its basement excavated about 24". By three years later, the foundations had cracked and shifted to the extent that you could walk _through_ them in three places.

What a nightmare.

[DanRB]

Thanks to everyone for your responses. Sorry it too so long to get back. I was away from my computer all day yesterday.

Seems like prices are all over the place. If I get prices like the higher ones many people got, I'll definitely skip it since it wouldn't be worth it. But, if the price turns out to be like the lower ones people received, I may just go ahead with it.

It sounds like the plaster-over-wood-lath walls might more of a problem than I realized. A few cracks would be okay with me, but if it would mess up a lot of the interior and require a lot of work fixing the a walls, that probably wouldn't be worth it either.

It really helped hearing lots of opinions, both from people who did it and people who just got bids, etc. So, thanks again.

Im going to try calling house movers this week and ask them more about it. I had looked in the phonebook last week and was going to do that, but there was almost nothing there -- just one place about 25 miles away. So, I thought I'd start by getting some other input and feedback first.