I am looking of ideas to safely lift part of my house off it’s concrete slab so that I can put in a 24″ pony wall, 9 1/2″ floor joists and floor sheeting; affectively making a crawl space for mechanical. The walls will be stripped to the studs with the exterior sheeting still on; no ceiling just open trusses and roof sheeting. This part of the house is 24′ x 34′. I’ve built houses bottom to top and done lots of renos but nothing quite like this. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks
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A house mover would bolt iron channels or possibly 4x to the exterior walls a few feet above the slab, and then run their lifting beams thru and jack from their. I would hire someone very qualified unless you have a lot of experience with this, and a lot of equipment.
With no rock on the walls and ceiling there's really not that much weight there. Plus you're not really worried if the temp bracing sags or bounces a bit. So you can probably make do with about 1/4 of what would be "normal" to permanently support the load.
But the devil is in the details. How many exterior walls on the area being excavated? How is this area connected to the rest of the house?
Start shimming and jacking!
You basically are raising a rough frame. Don't twist or bend it too much.
Bob's next test date: 12/10/07
Like David said....'Horiz. beams tied into your framing'
a quick and dirty approach after that is to use 2 rough terrain fork lifts as opposed to jacks and cribbing.