How much does a garage weigh?

A friend has bought a place out of town to retire to. It has a garage, 24x32, sitting on a collapsing strip footing and cinder block pony wall. Stick built, no insulation or drywall, 2 8' doors.

It needs to be lifted, moved out of the way, have a new floor poured, then moved back and set into place again. Anybody out here who has building moving equipment is booked for a couple of years, plus they are not really interested in a small job like this. I figure a couple of I beams, some channel, a bunch of bottle jacks and a few wheels sets could make this happen.

Advice? Want to come north and have some fun?

Is there room to just pour a new slab next to the existing one and then move the garage onto the new slab, so you only have to move it once? Then the old one becomes a paved parking area.

When my neighbor did it, he lifted the garage about two feet, dug out around the foundation for a footing some feet down and built a cinder block foundation. Once dry, he put the garage on the new blocks and then poured a floor.

Dan

I've seen garages for modular homes delivered. You need to build some kind of floor structure to keep the thing from racking when you lift it and or move it. If you can just lift it and crib it with some railroad ties, that would be the easiest thing. Seen 2 houses lifted that way because they needed to excavate under them to clean up the mess from ruptured oil tanks. If you need to move it out of the way, do it like the Egyptians and roll it on some pipe or round logs.

Cut it in half, reinforce the two halves with lots of cross bracing and you can lift each 12 by 32 side with a couple rubber tire backhoes or large tractors. I've done that.

Around here they use hydraulic jacks to raise homes about a foot at a time, then they use Railroad ties to brace them.. lather, rinse, repeat until at a good working height to repair or replace the foundation

Straight up isn't really a problem, but it would be awfully nice to not have to crawl around under the thing while digging for the footings. There are also some benefits to pouring a slab around here, too. I think strip footings need to be piled down below the frost line, which is about 8 feet here.

I kinda like the "Cut it in half" option. We may explore.

Also, I'm a bit disappointed that nobody actually did the math from the title... Around here, that's a bit of a shock.

The farmers move them all the time on flatbed wagons/trailers, although that one is probably 20%-25% larger than most.

Ballpark weight by a non-engineer: 10k lbs would be my estimate.

Block it up then dig around it an replace the foundation/slab. I've seen houses done that way. Even saw one today.

My dad bought about 50 chinese bottle jacks at an auction and used them to raise a VERY BIG barn six feet to put a concrete wall underneath. Six foot wall so he probably had the barn up more like 8 feet. I think he did it in 2 foot pours or something. I would ask him for more details but he has dementia and would probably run off and find me a bycicle

I'll second the no-move plan. Jack the whole structure with a few i-beams under the rafters or perhaps some fabricated jacking braces on the side walls if the rafters aren't solidly attached. Crib it up with some ties and excavate out for the foundation. When that's done, set the building back down and then fill up the inside with your new concrete floor. A good deal easier than it sounds. I've worked on a number of similar projects.

You want a lift in the new garage right? Put lift in center, secure to garage as needed, push button....

Other though was to drive a backhoe inside, secure to front and rear buckets, lift and drive to new location.

Gearheadotaku wrote: You want a lift in the new garage right? Put lift in center, secure to garage as needed, push button.... Other though was to drive a backhoe inside, secure to front and rear buckets, lift and drive to new location.

They are too heavy for that.

My Dad tried it.

He ended up lifting it with big house jacks and big I beams. I can't say how heavy it was, but it was too much for the loader. He also didn't move it X or Y, just up something like 4-5 feet vertically.