Older Connecticut homes can have a few surprises hiding underneath them. A house may have started small, then somebody added a kitchen, family room, porch, or bedroom years later. Before you know it, one house can be sitting on two or even three different types of foundations. Part of it might have a full basement while another part sits over a crawl space. An addition might even be sitting on a concrete slab. When we take on a new House Lifting project in CT, finding these different sections early is a big deal because they may not all lift the exact same way.
This is where we really have to look at how the house was put together. An addition built thirty years after the original home may have different floor framing, different support points, and a completely different foundation underneath it. Sometimes the connection between the old house and the addition needs extra attention too. With Structural Lifting, we need to know where the weight is going before anything starts moving. You cannot just assume the whole house will act like one solid box because it looks like one from the street.
A slab section can make the job even more interesting. There may not be an open basement or crawl space underneath where we can easily get to the framing. That can change where beams go and how that part of the structure gets supported. The basement section may need one setup while the crawl space needs another. Good House lifting work is about getting all those pieces to work together. That takes some thinking before the jacks ever start doing their job.
Once we begin lifting, slow and steady is important. One part of an older house may want to move a little differently than another, especially when additions were built years apart. We keep an eye on the different sections as they come up and make changes when needed. That is a big part of House Lifting in CT that people do not always see. The exciting part might be watching the house rise, but the careful work underneath is what helps everything get where it needs to go.
At High Caliber Contracting, we actually like figuring out houses like these. Every old Connecticut home has its own story, and sometimes you can read half of that story just by looking underneath it. A basement, crawl space, and slab under the same home does not automatically mean the house cannot be lifted. It means the lift needs a plan built around that particular house. That is what Structural Lifting is all about. We figure out what we are working with, support each section the right way, and bring the home up carefully.