Want to move Carport

[Tony Hayes]

Some years ago I built a free standing carport at the rear of my house. It's a hefty thing - 24 ft long x 10 ft wide. The frame is built using wood - 4x4in uprights (10), 5x2in cross members (5) and 3x2in (6) 24 ft long supports for the plastic coated steel sheeted roof!! Two sides are also sheeted. The legs have Metpost bolt-down fixings on 18in square concrete bases.

I want to move it LOL!!! Yes, I'm serious ............. Now my brain tells me it will have to be dismantled, but before I take it apart has anyone got any ideas how I could move it intact, or even partially intact? I want to move it sideways approx 10 feet.

Thanks, Tony

[baz]

Nine strong mates Baz

[Bob Mannix]

You could try getting nine friends round on the pretext of giving them beer and take a leg each. You could fix handles to each leg first and unbolt the fixings

[Christian McArdle]

You can get those hovercraft things, like they move spacecraft and power station generating equipment on.

Christian.

P.S. why 4in x 4in uprights? Were you planning to keep the cars ON the carport, rather than under it?!?

[Andrew Mawson]

Lay 'tracks' of scaffold poles from where the carport is to where you want it. Make up a structure that clamps to your 4x4s and has scaffold poles as its base running at 90 degrees to your tracks. Transfer the weight of the carport to the structure that you have made by jacking up each leg in turn before clamping to your structure. Sliding the 'structure' over the tracks should be perfectly feasible by one or two large adults, but failing that winch it across using short poles driven into the ground as ground anchors.

If you are local I'll give you a hand.

Andrew Mawson (Bromley, Kent)

[Nick Finnigan]

Exactly 10 feet, so that one set of posts could stay in place? A frosty weekend might be useful

[Jim]

Good bin liners--lots of rope--and a large cylinder of helium should do it.

[BillR]

They're to hold up that weighty roof :-)

[Tony Hayes]

Thanks for the replies all. Finding nine friends willing to do a bit of hard graft will be impossible, since most are older than my 60 years ;-)

I like the idea of a hovercraft or helium filled bin bags :-)

Andrew - your idea sounds feasible, so will try and work something out along those lines. Thanks for the offer of help, but I'm in deepest South Wales.

Thans again, Tony

[Tony Hayes]

Yes, the roofing sheets are quite heavy - at least 8 of them together are! And 4x4s aren't that much more expensive than 3x3s, so I thought i would err on the safe side. I thought the plastic type roofing sheets seemed pretty flimsy. It is the most solid carport I've ever seen though ;-) It's painted green and the sheets are green and blends in OK with a background of trees in the field behind.

Tony