Category Archives: House Lifting

This Time It’s 8cm Too Small for a Deck

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In one of my previous posts, 4cm Too Small for a Bathroom, I wrote about how we had to get rid of our built in wardrobe in the master bedroom and put the family bathroom there instead because there was not enough room under the stairs for a bathroom, by 4cm.

Well this time we found out from the Townsville City Council that our house is 8cm too close to the boundary line than the current council regulations allow! This is a problem because we are wanting to put a deck on the back of the house that is in line with the current house…

It was a good experience for us to meet the neighbours on that side of us. The council informed us that we just needed to get their permission for the construction and then it shouldn’t be a problem. They gave us permission quite willingly, which was great, so now town planning is looking into it and they will hopefully give us a verdict soon. If everything comes up good then we should actually be able to move on ahead of schedule with the raise and restump of our house, which would be really good since Tamara (my wife) is now 30.5 weeks pregnant!

At the moment we are at stage 5 on our House Lifting and Restumping Schedule, except so far instead of the builder and architect having to get new things off to council, we are the ones doing it.

Some other good news is that the guy who will be raising and restumping our house will only need us out of the house for a week, instead of the three weeks that we thought we might have to be out for. (See previous article Out of the House for Three Weeks!!! to see when we were told that.)

Out of the House for Three Weeks!!!

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When we enquired about lifting our old house we were told the we had to be out of the house for 8-hours during the actual lifting, but other than that and a couple of hours here and there we would be fine to keep living in the house. With that in mind we have been planning to lift the house as soon as possible, which looks like mid-March to mid-April.

Last week though we were told that we actually have to be out of the house for three weeks during the lifting! That’s quite a change from the 8-hours that we were told by the company we talked to a few years ago. To top it off our new baby is due to be born on April 14th!

If you check out my previous article, House Lifting and Restumping Schedule, you can see a step by step guide to how the house will be lifted. We will need to be out of the house for steps 8 – 12 (maybe 13), which is about 3 – 4 weeks worth of work. That’s of course if everything goes to plan and there isn’t any adverse weather…

House Re-Stumping Checklist

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The article below about house re-stumping is quite an old one, so I don’t know how relevant some of the technical information is, but the more general information seems to be quite good. It is copyright 1997, so that would explain some of the diferences that I have seen between what they write and what I’ve seen around Townsville now.

One thing that is definitely lacking is that there is no mention of steal stumps for your re-stumping project. Almost all of the new homes that I have seen up here in Townsville that have been re-stumped in the last 5-years or so have used steal stumps instead of the older timber or concrete stumps.

Archicentre: DIY Restumping Checklist

You can check out my own checklist for what we are currently walking though in getting our own house lifted and re-stumped here, House Lifting and Restumping Schedule, we are currently at step number 1 still, although I should have the plans for the house tomorrow to move on to step number 2 which is taking it to the Engineer.

House Lifting and Restumping Schedule

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What I thought was going to be an easy process looks now like it will be taking a lot longer and be a lot more involved then I thought. Here are the steps that we are going to have to go through before the house is even enclosed under:

  1. Architect still needs to complete the plans (this is a lot more complex than I thought it would be and is taking over two weeks now for completion)
  2. Plans from Architect need to go to the Engineer who needs to take soil samples and check the structural integrity of the house as well as working out the structural needs of the new stumps and beams
  3. Plans need to go back to the Architect for any changes that need to be made for structural purposes
  4. Architect plans and Engineering plans need to be submitted to Townsville City Council for approval (minimum 6-week wait, but probably longer because of Christmas)
  5. Architect and Engineer may need to make changes to suit council requirements
  6. Resubmit to council if needed
  7. Plans go back to contractor who will be lifting the house
  8. Builder will come in and put three steel beams down the length of the house to support it as the old bricks and stumps that currently support the house are knocked out and removed and the old slab is also removed
  9. House is jacked up to about 3.5 metres above the ground
  10. New beams and stumps installed and left to set
  11. House is lowered onto new stumps
  12. New Stairs are built
  13. New slab laid under house
  14. Now finally at this stage it can be enclosed under

All of this is going to take them about six months from when we got someone to do it for us. The timing could be pretty bad as they will start about the middle of March and it will take them at least three weeks to get the job done. Our baby is due in mid-April. So we sure are cutting it close…