Moving a building

[Mr_Mike]

I am quite impressed. I'm glad it worked out.

[MarkSingleton]

Well done!!

[Bob10]

It has taken me a long time, but I/we finally moved our old garage in summer 2020.  I've tried to cut and paste my daughter's blog entry about the move since she included pictures.  I don't know if this will work, but I'll give it a try.  If this doesn't work, I'll try again since someone will be able to tell me what I did wrong.  Just in case, here's the link to her blog about this job and other projects.

https://warnerinstituteblog.wordpress.com/


If you can see the pictures, you will see that this was an elegant and highly professional operation....On second thought, maybe it will be best if you can't see the pictures.  However, I can say confidently that at no time during the two day move did anyone say..."Hey y'all, watch this!"  

Thanks again for all your suggestions and advice,
Michael

That time we moved a building
JULY 16, 2020 / LEAVE A COMMENT
Our most exciting and stressful project to date (at least I think so) has been moving this building. This little red structure is something we affectionately call the carriage house. Did it have carriages in it? We don’t actually know. Does the Historical Society consider it a historical structure? They sure do. And without it I’d have no where to park my mower so it’s obviously needed.

I took the above picture the day I signed the papers to buy the house. It is a perfectly fine structure it was just blocking the (then and one day again) beautiful garden so mom and dad decided to change that. Last summer we had a pad poured after we got approval from the city and historical commission to move it. And then dad had a year to agonize and plan. So the first step was to stabilize and brace the building to make it as solid as possible

Then my wonderful friends Zack, Andrew, and Jesse built a rock wall out of the many many stones I pulled out of the garden. Isn’t it a nice looking little wall??

And then we began doing the insane. We pulled a building on top of that wall…. I don’t think anyone felt super confident in the wall except for Dad. But kudos to Zack, Andrew, and Jesse because that thing worked! We used the truck as a movable anchor at first and attached tow straps around and to the building. We jacked the building up and put it on round fence poles as rollers. Then we used come-alongs to actually move it. So little by little this building moved.

And I’m talking LITTLE by little. We had a total of 78ft to move and each come-along pulled around 3ft, if we’re being generous. At times we’d have to stop and reset to make tiny adjustments in what we were doing so we didn’t even complete 3ft of movement each reset. It took 2 full days of constant work, pulling and adjusting to move this thing.

After we ran out of rock wall we built a track with scrap wood we pulled out of the house when we demo-ed the upstairs.

That worked brilliantly too. I don’t have a picture of it but Jesse and Andrew also fashioned a second track that ran next to the existing track to add stability. That definitely helped. Throughout the adjustments we used the truck to move from and the trees along the property line. Here are some progress pictures.



As you can imagine these were taken when we finally got it over the pad. I was very excited. About midday on day 2 I thought it really would never get there. BUT IT DID! Once it got there we were able to use the fence posts to move the building as perfectly as possible. While we were getting nearer to the pad Gordon showed up and gave us a hand! Thank you very much to him for the help too!

As you can see the walls worked very hard

So just a couple of my favorite before and afters:


[img=518x0]https://warnerinstituteblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/20190322_190909.jpg?resize=1960%2C1960[/img]
[img=518x0]https://warnerinstituteblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/20200712_171832.jpg?resize=2000%2C2000[/img]

I don’t know what you guys think but I think it looks phenomenal!! Next up I hope to post about the finish work on the carriage house!
And I just want to say a massive thank you again to my wonderful friends. We couldn’t have done it without them so thank you for 2 straight days of micro adjustments and wall building 

Great news and job.  Pretty much what I suggested to you.  I have to tell you when I first learned how to move things that way I was surprised how well pipe works for the job

[Roly]

Great news and job.  Pretty much what I suggested to you.  I have to tell you when I first learned how to move things that way I was surprised how well pipe works for the job

We moved large indoor transformers the same way but we had steel rollers.   I even use 1" pcv to move my entertainment center when i need to.    Roly

[crokett™]

Wow. From personal experience I know how hard that is to do. I am truly impressed. Great job.

[Stwood_]

Well done.

And no, I'm not gonna quote you like Bob did. Lol

[Bob10]

Well done.

And no, I'm not gonna quote you like Bob did. Lol

Hey it deserved a second look, plus I have a close relation to that truck sitting in front the house!!

[Stwood_]

Hey it deserved a second look, plus I have a close relation to that truck sitting in front the house!!

Copy that. Mid 80's?

[Baumholder]

Copy that. Mid 80's?

Good call, 1986 or at least most of it is.  We call it "Ole Blue" and it has one front fender with F-150 and the other fender with F-100.  

For rollers, I ended up using round fence posts.  I couldn't find any economical large metal pipes, and I tried lowering the building on 4" Schedule 40 and the weight deformed it.  The fence posts worked well enough to get the job done.

[Snipe Hunter]

Outstanding! We really need an awards committee, this one's well deserving.