House Haulin' on HGTV

[bigbee]

Anybody ever see this show? Just watched a 10 Ton tractor painted in pretty blue and white move a 4,000 sq foot house on to a barge someplace on the gulf coast. Not even a grunt from the truck. Couple weeks ago they were on Grosse Isle in Detroit moving a house in 3 pieces from one side of the island to the other. One of the pieces was towed by another 10T. Of course, not much credit is given to the trucks in the show, but most of us appreciate the fact that they are being used.

 

[doghead]

RE: House Haulin

Yup, seen the show! Cool civilian use for sure! I want to move a house just to be able to tell others that I have! (Just not my house!)

 

[ARMYMAN30YearsPlus]

RE: House Haulin

While waiting for the ARMY to get me a slot in OBC, back in 1984 I worked for a house mover in Fitchburg MA who was working on four houses at the same time. The biggest one was in Worchester as an insurance company bought a big parcel to expand their building and parking and some guy got the house for $1500. It was a huge turn of the century home with marble floors and three full floors. Breaking through the basement walls we built large cribs of heavy timer and then inserted 20 inch wide flange I beams equal distant and balance pointed under the house. Then with large 20 inch beams locked between the I beams and a bridle tying the beams together we jacked the house off the foundation.

We then built two runways on the cribs in the basement under the beams and brought in a truckload of 8 inch rollers made of hardwood. With rollers all posistioned under the beams they were lowered onto the rollers and a huge Kenworth tractor with a 600 horse CAT came in and hooked to the bridle He started pulling and we were in the basement catching the rollers as they came off the back and running to the front to put them back in front of the beam as it was being pulled. As the house came off we possistioned two eight wheel dollies under the beams at the back and then pulled the house free.

The trip to its new home took three days because the movers know that during bussiness hours the power company has to lower the lines for free but after hours they charge to do this so we moved it as far as we could during those hours till we found a pre-arranged parking spot and took up the next day.

The owner had a beautiful lot on a hill over looking the Norton Abrasives area of the town and we set it on his foundation and new basement in an opposit operation of what I described above.

An interesting but scary note to this move was that during jacking one of the cribs broke a timber and the house dropped about 8 inches over my head. I have not been so scared in three trips to war with the Army. It took a few minutes and a cold coke to get me back down there.

We also dismantled an old Catholic School in Fitchburg and found some of the most beautiful yellow pine joists in the building that we saved them all by cutting them out of the wall. This made the wall very weak and my climbs up that wall to thread the ripping chain nearly kept me from living this long.

All in all it was an interesting thing to take up my time waiting for a seat in Officer basic.

 

[NEIOWA]

Re: RE: House Haulin

While waiting for the ARMY to get me a slot in OBC, back in 1984 .

Summer of '85 I sold new Ford cars while waiting for a IOBC slot. Not a single interesting tale at all. Good money though.