House Raising, Sliding and Restumping - Cochrane Street Project

Raising and Sliding and Restumping

Some (if not most) people find this phase scary and daunting and it sure can be exactly that. But there are ways to minimise the stress that comes with it.

choose a company that has an outstanding reputation and that has proper and current insurances
check out some houses that are on timber styes, they look impressive
talk to owners of houses that are on styes or who have just finished that phase
this has been done millions of times before and the number of disasters is infinitesimal (aka very small).

Traditional Queenslanders are on stumps, it keep the place cool in summer and too cold in winter. Like many others, when buying the house we considered capitalising on the view by raising our house. So we did and the top of the roof is up to the maximum allowed height of 9.5mtrs (that’s the general rule in Brisbane for house like ours).

When selecting a house raising company, a few things were crucial (in order of importance):

must have a current QBCC licence without conditions and a “clean” QBCC record
must have current insurances (PI/PL)
must also do things such as stumping (for extensions), retaining walls, concrete slabs (e.g. driveway)
must be reasonably priced
must have a good reputation

Some examples of companies we have contacted are:

In this post we take you on our journey raising, sliding and and restumping our house. Some (if not most) people find this phase scary and daunting and it sure can be exactly that. But there are ways to minimise the stress that comes with it.

Engaging a House Raiser

There are several businesses within the Brisbane region that raise houses. Some can also do other works such as house re-leveling, concreting, retaining walls, excavations and more.

We went with Shane Steele from Steele House Raising for reasons such as reliability, experience, price and the fact that Shane goes over and above to help OBs to get the job done. And also important to us is that Shane is a friendly, hard working and approachable professional.

Some other big names are Meier House Removals, Raise My House, Brisbane House Restumping, Budget House Raising and Brisbane House Raising (see our Links for more info).

Preparation Stage

For most OBs this is probably the most daunting stage. Why? Because it involves having to do things that most OBs will have never done and because there are not a lot of resources out there to take you through the process one step at a time. This is our attempt to take you on this journey bit by bit. What we have done is documented what, when and how we did it.

But before we get started, there are a few assumptions which not apply to your project, these are:

the site is on a slope
the house is being raised, slit and restumped
you aren’t a professional builder nor have one to do this for you
there is some fairly serious excavation required (not just scraping the top off to poor a slab)
the entire house is on stumps

Step 1. Disconnect services such as power and gas (but not water)

Start this early, as in really early. Getting our gas abolished took over three months, dropping the power cable took about two months. Read more details in our posts on gas and electricals.

Step 2. Prepare the under-house and any extension areas

This involves any demolition and clean-up of existing structures, remove any nails, wires, plumbing, the old power meter (but keep it on site as its not yours) etc.. Make sure that all old beams are clean and flush (pack them if the have existing VJs for example). Check out our demolition journey here.

Step 3. Organise a site meeting with the house raiser

Make sure that you have a f2f meeting with your house raiser on-site, preferably at least one month before the scheduled raise. This gives you time to fix issues and also have any changes made to the engineering plans if suggested (for example swap LVLs for steel beams and add some more steel beams to stiffen up any “weaker” sections such as verandahs.

Step 4. Book in a Surveyor

You have to book in a surveyor to come out to site to make sure that everything lines up. The things they did were:

pin the corners of the house (in its new position)
pin the locations of the posts/beams
mark an RL (reduced level) on a 6mtr high piece of 2*90*35 piece of framing timber

Step 5. Prepare before for the surveyor arrives

… and this is where it gets tricky… Setting Out your profile boards. There are a few things to consider when setting out your profile boards

place them out of the way of where machines will work
have them at least 400mm off the ground
place them as level as possible, unless you have every crucial spot pinned
put stakes on either sides of the boards
have a stake at least every 900mm on one side and every 2400mm on the other side
if they need to stay in place a very long time, paint them

The RL stick is easy, make sure its long enough and solid and won’t move, that’s about it.

Step 6. Get pins and RL done

Don’t have pegs put in spots where they have to be taken out again to dig a hole. You pay a lot of money to get it in the perfect spot to then have them pulled out…??? Plus it is not uncommon for builders and other tradies to “just pull the peg out for a sec… I’ll put it back in the same spot mate, don’t stress“.

When your surveyor comes to site, make sure you are on site as well and have the surveyor pin the points as you have discussed with your house raiser. Yes, you pay for every pin but consider how much easier and more accurate it will be for the house raiser if every post hole location is perfectly pinned.

Step 7. Confirm Set Out

Take photos and get confirmation from your house raiser and get an “ok, looks great” confirmation.

Step 8. Have a site toilet before the earthworks start

We got one from City Hire, they are by far the best. They came out straight away to confirm that the toilet would be positioned in the right place. The price is far better than say Kennards and it includes fortnightly pumping and cheap delivery/pickup. They also don’t need a crane which is ideal.

Step 9. Excavate as per the plans (cut levels as per your RL and plans) and pins

Start at the top. To avoid not having access, always start at the top and work your way down. Remove any rubbish from the dirt pulled out such as PVC, glass, steel etc.

Step 10. Confirm excavations are correct

Before you hand over to the experts to raise, slide and restump check the cut site with your house raiser. This is also a time where you can choose to dig any footings for retaining walls before the raise or wait until after. We waited until after as we like to tackle one challenge at a time. Was that the best decision…??? Don’t know but in the end we go there amyway.

Links

House Raising, Sliding and Restumping