Lifting a home’s foundation isn’t as easy as it sounds. Check that – it doesn’t sound easy.
A home’s foundation is a very rigid structural piece, the heart of your home’s anatomy. So, when you go to lift a home you can expect a variety of scenarios:
- A clean lift, resulting in maximum practical recovery
- A botched lift, resulting in further foundation damage
o A botched lift typically happens directly due to inexperience
Luckily, we here at Dalinghaus Construction Inc. are very experienced and provide you foundation repair options with our articles:
- Best Foundation Repair Companies San Diego County
- Best Foundation Repair Companies in Central Arizona
The first step in lifting a home is to know exactly what the expectations are for the amount of lift you want to achieve.
We do this by utilizing floor elevation measurements. Once we determine which areas of the home have settled, we design a repair plan implementing either push pier or helical pier steel systems.
After all of the piers are installed in the affected area, we set up our lifting apparatus at each pier location. Each apparatus includes a lifting head and a hydraulic cylinder.
This is where it can get tricky. You will need to check off the following items when you are performing a lift:
- Confirm the amount of lift for each location
- Monitor and measure all locations during the lifting process
- Shut off lift locations once the desired lift has been achieved
- Lock all locations off once a house has been lifted to the desired elevation
Now, there are several obstacles that can arise during the lift:
- Inordinately deep footings around the home’s perimeter
- Previously installed pier systems
- Caissons
All of these can drastically limit the lifting process. If these are discovered, we must first remove the items inhibiting the lift before the process can be initiated.
If these impediments are not removed, the home will not be stabilized, and the load of the home will not be transferred to the new pier system.
Now, these occurrences are very rare, but they do happen. This is one of the major unknowns within our profession as many of these homes do not have building plans that we are able to review prior to the installation/lift process.
But, at the end of the day, we can lift 99% of foundations we take on, but there could always be outlying scenarios that inhibit a successful lift.
For another article on the subject, check out: What to Expect When Lifting a Home (Cosmetic Corruption & Functionality).
If you live in Southern California or Central Arizona and would like to learn more about the foundation repair process, download our guide below –
