How do you hold up a house?

Once the interior excavation had been completed, I wanted to bring the house completely to level, and I wanted to do so in a way that was pretty secure. So I purchased 2.5" schedule 80 pipe and then built these stands on which the house would sit. The whole process was relatively easy. First I built the platforms and used the jacks to lift the house and load the platforms. Then I used a rotating laser level to figure out how tall each of the posts would need to be, to bring the house to level. Then I simply welded the posts in. That's it. Now the house is level and pretty secure (each of the platforms is 2x2).

This is a closeup of the platform, showing the pipes being completely welded and the skip welds along the channel -> plate connection.

I finished up the welding late at night, but wanted to document it. Here you can see, eight platforms, two for each beam. The nearest post on the left is slightly off plumb and it drives me nuts. But not enough for me to cut it off and fix it.

Interior Excavation

So, you've got this house, up on cribbing, and you need to excavate underneath it. How do you do it?

Options:

1) Crawl underneath the house and kill yourself (because you don't want to shovel dirt with only 18" of clearance)

2) Pay someone shitty wages to crawl underneath the house and shovel the dirt

3) Pay someone over $12k to come and lift the house up 4+ feet so you can get earth moving equipment under the house

4) Pay $200 in materials and build a dredge, and then proceed to run the dredge for hours at a time

 Seeing that I am cheap and can build things, I went with option 4. And here it is, here is the initial incarnation of the dredge. The dredge will be pulled with a Harbor Freight A/C powered winch, so really all I need to do is sit there, push a button, wait, push another button, wait and the house will be magically excavated!

The dredge was wildly successful. This was the very first run of the dredge and it pulled out this chunk of concrete with no problems.

Here is a picture of the dredge / winch setup. I rigged up a pulley system anchored to the back of the house, so I could pull the winch both to and fro. This meant I just had to sit there and watch my dirt pile grow.
















Here I am, in "Seattle Camouflage" (meaning jeans, boots and a flannel shirt). I would dredge the dirt from under the house and pull it to the front of the house. From there, I would need to haul the dirt away using the "Dingo" (walk behind front-loader). This step was repeated ad nausea.

Here, you can see that I put the dredged earth to good use, namely leveling the yard. Eventually I'll have enough to level all of the front yards, so my neighbors' yards and mine will all be level.

And here is the end result, the ground underneath the house has been lowered by a foot or so, and is now nearly level. This was something I had not been anticipating, a usable crawl space!

How to jack a house

So one of the ways I wanted to optimize this renovation, was to do as little interior excavation as possible. And so when working with the architect, I asked if I could replace the floor beams with large steel beams that would span  the 20 ft width. He said yes, so the plans were updated.

The giant steel beams have two benefits. First they will allow me to easily lift the house, since I will have large and sturdy platforms to jack up. Secondly, they will make excavation easier since I will only have to excavate and place pin piles on the outer perimeter of the house. So yay on both accounts!

Unfortunately Everett Steel didn't have the means to deliver the beams into my driveway easily. It would've required me renting an excavator or something to unload it from a flatbed. So I decided it would be easier to rent a flatbed from Handy Andy and use that to pick up and drop off the beams. It worked really well actually. I managed to back up into the driveway and then "toss" the beams off the back and in front of the house.

The floor joists can't sit directly on the beams, so pressure treated 2x6s need to be bolted to the top of the beams. This involved drilling way too many holes in thick steel. Suffice to say, I spent a lot of time with my 1/2 heavy duty drill, my Drill Doctor and a bottle of cutting fluid.

Here is a picture of the underneath of the house. You can see the original floor beams underneath the joists. And you can see they are just sitting on wooden posts on top of concrete pier blocks. They were in remarkably decent shape actually.

So I wasn't about to physically drag the beams around and put them under the house. They were 300+ lbs per, and really ungainly. So, mini-excavator to the rescue! (Can you tell I love this machine?)

Here, you can see the beams after they are initially installed. Pay attention to how low the house is sitting here, It'll eventually get jacked up quite a bit.

Once the beams were in place, I started jacking the house up and adding cribbing, to bring the house to level, and also allow me to remove the old beams, posts and piers.

And here, you can see the new beams installed and all of the old beams removed. It's amazing how much room it opened up underneath the house.

Here you can see the back of the house, the angle of this shot is crooked, but the house has been jacked up about 6 inches and looks soo much better.

Artifacts

One of the interesting aspects of renovating an older home, is what you find when you tear it apart!

For instance, the walls of this home were filled with all sorts of "insulating" material. Such as newspapers from the 30s.

Note the warning on this page: apparently Italy was arming in the 30s, who knew?!?

I know I showed this picture earlier, but sawdust. Really?

Apparently the builder of this house liked potatoes. Or like stealing sacks from Elmer Hansen. One or the other.

Most of the insulating material was from the 30s, and it was pretty concentrated in the back portion of the house, which makes me think the back porch was originally enclosed during this time. Which makes sense given the type of construction used.

Exterior Demo

Now that the driveway is complete, and I can back up a 5 yard dump truck (from Handy Andy Rentals, of course!). So now I am willing to work on the exterior demolition. 

My initial plan for the house was to demolish the old (and poorly) enclosed porches. This will take the structure back to the original footprint.  The first step was to demolish the back enclosed porch. I don't have many pictures from this stage, as the novelty of documenting the whole process had worn thin. So here you just get to see the back of the house, after the demo, wrapped in plastic.

This is what the old porch looks like on the floor of the transfer station. This is roughly 2,500 lbs of debris I just unloaded.

During the demolition of the back porch, you could see that they had actually insulated portion of the structure with sawdust. It was pretty amazing just how much sawdust was used. I was also impressed that the whole thing hadn't burned down in the last 90 years. It wasn't a house of cards, so much as a house of kindling.

Here you can see the dump truck backed up in the driveway during the front demolition. Not having to haul the material the extra 30 odd feet might now sound like a big advantage, but it was *massively* helpful.

I found so many entertaining things during the demolition. For instance, one wall was filled with a bee hive. Which would be cool if there was honey. But there wasn't. Thankfully there were no bees.

I finished up with the front demolition rather late. But here is a picture of the knee bracing I installed to support the roof once the front porch was gone.

This is better picture of the front of the house, now that the exterior demolition is complete!

Driveway

Remember how I said that the excavator was super awesome?

So after excavating out 16" of depth for the future gravel driveway (which is temporary, as gravel is considered "impermeable" and I can't add any more impermeable surface to my property.

But I augured various holes in the driveway to provide good drainage. I eventually covered his layer with geotextile fabric, so really this whole thing should drain well.

Once the excavation was finished, I used cinder blocks to provide a form for the grave. This way in case I need to pull all of the gravel, it'll be WAAAY easier.

And now begins the process of hauling load after load of gravel. Unfortunately I can't accommodate a full size dump truck due to the trees and the overhead lines running in front of the driveway, otherwise this would've been much much easier

First test of the new driveway! It passed, nothing cracked!

Eventually I learned about Handy Andy and his amazingly cheap rental trucks. I was able to rent a full size pickup with a dumping bed and that really sped up the process of filling in the driveway with gravel.

Finally! Now I can walk about 30 fewer feet per round trip! :)

Also, this now gives me a staging area for material, concrete pumps and machinery. So having this is really the first big thing I needed to do before I can continue with the final demolition.

Note that I compacted the layers of gravel, so it is a really sturdy surface. I used 3-4" spalls in a 12" layer, followed by clean 1 1/4" and finally 3/4" for the top inch. Each layer compacted separately.

House Renovation - First Project Complete!

So the first step to a working driveway is the curb-cut.

The curb-cut is the portion of the driveway that is on city property. In Seattle, the planting strip next to the street is generally 10 ft and belongs to the city. The sidewalk is typically 5 ft and also belongs to the city. And if you do want a driveway, you are allowed to install a concrete "curb-cut" which provides access to your private driveway, but of course you must do the work yourself or pay an approved contractor to do it. Of course, I chose to do the work myself.

Here, you can see that I've rented both a concrete saw and a jackhammer. The excavation for the curb-cut is complete, the old curb has been jackhammered off and now I need to remove the portion of the street that intersects into the future curb-cut.

I started by making a 3 inch cut with the concrete saw along the line of the curb. I then used the jackhammer to break up the concrete along the line.

Here is a different view, you can see the excavation is complete for both the curb-cut and the driveway. You can see both the "dingo" walk-behind front loader to the left, and the upright compactor to the right.

Here, I've started working on the forms for the curb-cut.

The concrete truck has arrived! I think I used 8 yard of concrete. It was a special mix specified by the city. The driver was super helpful as I didn't know my ass from my elbow when it came to placing concrete.

Once the concrete is poured and roughly leveled, I began smoothing it out. It was really easy all told. Most of the work involved was in the preparation.

The only sections that were at all a little tricky were the flare out chunks on the sides. These needed to be built up and smoothed out.

And this was the final result! A new curb-cut to the city specifications, permitted and approved.

Note, that I used a broom finish to help with traction and tried to make it look nice.