Last week, they picked up the house next door and moved it a block over. The next step is to run a street through it. While they’re at it, they tore up the street behind us to repave it. Also, eighteen months or so they started a construction project on the school across the way and they still haven’t finished it. The result? Dirt. Lots and lots of dirt. Everywhere. Since we have to keep our windows open for circulation, we have dirt in the sink. There’s dirt all over the computer room. Dirt, dirt, dirt.
To add to this, Arapaho has been plagued with fires lately. Nothing around where we live, but it’s enough that our fire department has been mobilized for the last month or so, driving all over the state to lend a hand. It’s also enough that there are all sorts of fire bans, including an outdoor smoking ban. I tried to honor it, until I saw cops ignoring it. When smoking is banned indoors, people smoke outdoors.
Today was a smoky day. I have no idea where the fire is, but there were firefighters all around the supply store where I went to watch the sky go from blue-silver, to silver, to gray, to orange. The firepeeps were also ignoring the smoking ban.
The sky has shifted to a very light orange, which is having a rather surreal affect on our view. The construction crews are gone for the night, which is nice not only for the dirt but also the noise. At least, unlike when they were gutting the basement last week, it hasn’t caused the house to shake (our dog’s reaction to the shaking house to the right).
Anyhow! For your listening enjoyment, Steve Earle’s “Ashes to Ashes.” A great song, if you’ve never heard it. Not remarkably country, if you are averse to country.
Since we have to keep our windows open for circulation, we have dirt in the sink.
You don’t have screens, or it’s fine enough to get through them?
The latter.
This is life in Pasadena.
My sympathies, especially for your terrified dog. Don’t know quite why that picture moved me so. I’ve had dust and cinders fall on me. I felt like a bag of meat at the time, horribly vulnerable.
They moved the house rather than just build a new one? Those are some strange economics at play.
Yep. Moved the house! I got pictures. It’s been kind of fun to watch.
That kind of thing can be very cool. I used to work in a building next to the Cathedral of Light in Oakland, and we got to see its construction all the way from digging the foundation to completion.
Wow. That’s a cool building.
I’m pretty sure I walked past that building when I was in Oakland last week.
After checking a map, I’m now 100% sure.
It can be a lot cheaper to move a house. Both materials costs and labor costs are generally far less than building new. Normally the house just has to be jacked up with stel beams through the foundation and a (big) truck backed under it. For a small frame house not going too far a move can be as little as ten grand, for the move itself. Bigger houses, especially if the have to be cut into multiple sections, will cost more. Distance will increase the cost, as will need to temporarily move obstructions like road signs and traffic lights. Knowing Will’s part of the country, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a modest frame house that wasn’t moved too far. And he already mentioned a basement, so we know it wasn’t on a slab, which would have made the jacking up process more difficult/expensive–when the foundation rises above ground it’s just a matter of punching holes in the foundation walls and running the beams through them, then putting the jacks underneath to raise them up. Not a job for amateurs, but fairly straightforward.
Wow. This gets it right on all fronts. When they knocked out the holes in the foundation wall, I was scratching my head. Then I saw them put the beam on it. The house rested over the front yard for a couple days, then they moved it.
I’ve seen the process a couple of times, including a house my wife and I rented until it was scold to be moved (it sat where u. Oregon’s new basketball arena sits). I first became fascinated by the while thing when I was a kid, when a house on a crve in the road just outside our town got hit by a car yet again, so they moved the house further from the road. I asked my dad how they did it, and he replied, “they just picked it up and moved it.”. I had an image of a bunch of people bending down, grabbing a handhold, and all standing up at once to walk across the field with the house. Totally boggled my mind and I’ve had a weird fascination with it ever since.
Have you ever watched Deliverance? When they get off the river, thru walk up the hill pat a church that’s jacked up and ready to move, because the river’s being damned. Yeah, I always notice it.
I’ve been looking at prefab (modular) housing lately. A little piece of me goes giddy over houses you can put on a truck and put together on-site. It helps that I like the modernist look.
The whole thing next door inspired me to start looking at it again. We’re not in the market or anything, but the concept just tickles my imagination. As long as it’s not one of those that looks that a modular home. Those numb said imagination.
Even the river is damned? They really get into the fire and brimstone in those rural churches, huh?
Heh, great typo. Glad to play setup man for you.
Only $10K? That’s a lot less than I thought such a thing might be.
I’m guessing it would cost more in your area, for the obvious reasons as well as most things being slab-foundation. But then you know what a new house costs in your area, too.
What is a slab foundation?
A slab foundation is a flat concrete pad poured directly on the ground upon which the house is built. See link
http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/repair/house4.htm
Out here in my corner of SoCal, the style is to embed the water and sewer pipes (colloquially known as “comininta” and “goinoutta”) into the slab. The pipes stick out of the ground, then concrete is poured around them (among other things like primary structural support beams). After it all dries, you run pipe to where you want toilets, showers, etc. to be.
Moving such a thing would be, well, a chore — it’s not exactly a yurt you can just pick up and move. It hadn’t really occured to me that other sorts of houses would be built with more, shall we say, segmented kinds of foundations. That’s why I was surprised that you could pick up a house and move it for $10,000 — it could cost that much to drill out one toilet (as a landlord client of mine found out to his misery after a particularly spiteful tenant was evicted and poured about twenty pounds of quick-set cement down the crapper, but that’s another story).
What is a slab foundation?
Something that would crack, buckle, and quickly disintegrate in a northeastern winter.
Burt, I suspected your familiarity with the typical SoCal slab foundation house was shaping your perspective. And while slab houses can be moved, I suspect it’s not as often cost-effective.
20 pounds of quikcrete down the crapper? Man, that’s vindictive. You come into contact with some of the stranger aspects of human behavior in your job, don’t you?
James,
Back in my neck of the woods, about 25 years ago, the owner of the local ready-mix concrete business was involved in a nasty divorce. The ex was getting just about everything–house, car, savings, etc.
Well, the car was a really sweet convertible–I forget the make. You can see what’s coming, right?
Filled that sucker right up to the brim, just like out of some B-movie. It was a legendary f***-you b****!
Slab foundations are the devil.
There is a cool scene in I think one of the later “Lethal Weapon” movies where they have a fight sequence in half a house being moved down the highway.
I’ve seen a couple of those loads on the local highway here, I think because they’re too large to go down that stretch of the Thruway; they don’t mind blocking both lanes of the local highway, but it’s too much hassle to block both lanes of that section of the Thruway (which only has 2 lanes in each direction). Crazy what we can do nowadays.
Probably because of vertical clearances of the overpasses.