Does anyone know anything about moving a house to a new location?  

My wife and I have some property to build on, but both of us would 
really rather get an old house than put up a new one.  We musingly 
discussed it, and now I'm wondering about the possibilities.  How does 
one acquire a house to move?  Does it cost a lot?  How much does it cost 
to move one?  What other problems are there, that one might not 
encounter with a new house?

(I wonder where regular people go with questions such as this one.  
Where could one ask, if it weren't for Grex?)

70 responses total.

I watched a house being moved once, but that's all  I know about it.

Generally, it means digging out the foundations, carefully replacing the
foundation with a steel frame.  Then the house can be jacked up and moved.
Complications include having a path free of utility wires, etc. to move the
house on.  Sometimes old houses will be sold cheap in order to clear up land
for bigger buildings, etc., but I probably would'n hold my breath.  I think
the only saving is in materials, if you get a good deal on the house.  Labor
for moving will add up to a lot, and you still have to dig out and build a
basement/foundation at the new location.

(I'm going to link this to the Dwellings conf.)

Ask a house mover. When I was a kid I recall seeing houses being moved
frequently. Perhaps because almost all houses were wood frame, box-like,
and smaller than most houses today. 

Jep, I know a house mover.  I don't have his number handy, but drop me some
mail if you're interested.

John!  There is a wonderful old house on US-23 (Whitmore Lake Road) near
Whitmore Lake.  It has already been lifted off its foundation and set
in the field next door, but apparently the group that was going to move
it couldn't raise the money.  I bet you could get the house for almost
nothing.

That sounds great, Larry!  It's the sort of thing we may be looking for, 
a house with some character, as opposed to another modular home or 
double-wide like every other new house in Lenawee County.

Thanks, Chris!  I sent you an e-mail.

Call Ed Linkner,  973 1010.  He moved two beautiful Queen Anne houses from
the intersection of Packard and South Main to their current site on Huron
Parkway near Platt.  

Also, the University has been tearing down some nice old houses on Maiden
Lane, to turn what was once a nice looking neighborhood into a parking lot.
A few of those got moved rather than getting torn down.  I'm not sure if there
are any left there or not.  Last time I drove through there there were
significantly fewer houses than there had been a few months ago.

The Historical Society probably knows about house moving from the customer's
point of view.

        I've seen a couple moved. the description above is fairly accurate.
the higher costs show when the distance increases. you can also figure those
fine plaster walls will crack, and need repair after the move. If the house
 is of architectural note, then it might be worth it. otherwise...

        By the way, this is Carl Rankin. I'm considering leaving m-net, or at
least spending less time there. just so you know.

I'd just as soon build my own house to my own preferences then move someone
else's that was built for a different property and deal with the problems.
It's probably more trouble in the long run.

That's why people buy and move old houses - they enjoy the troubles so much.

The houses are generally cheap to free.  The expensive part is the lifting,
moving and setting.  The potential problems include the house not making it
as well as minor to significant damage in transport, not to mention that
the electrical system and plumbing do not get left behind.

We watched the huge brick house on Maiden Lane being moved.  Awesome!

The cost of moving the last house I saw moved far exceeded the cost of
building a duplicate f the house, but that was because of the distance it had
to be moved.  I think most houses that are moved are moved less than a mile
due to cost.

Depending on the logistics, moving a house is usually much cheaper than
building a duplicate.

Building a duplicate of most old houses would far exceed the price of a
conventional new house.  They used *real* wood in those days, as well as
real plaster, nails, etc.  It was not uncommon to use hardwood for much
of the structural framing.  In many cases, you can't *get* hardwood in
those dimensions today, and if you could, it would would be frightfully
expensive.  Applying plaster to lathework is a labour intensive process
-- which again would be very expensive, if you can even find people
today who know how to do it.  Old houses very often have other things
like oak flooring (wall-wall indoor carpeting was not common until the
60's), tile bathroom floors (with *tiny* tiles, hand installed), solid
wood doors, cast metal hardware, etc., which would all also be
moderately expensive.  Some things you just can't *get* unless you
design your own house.  High ceilings, for instance, seem to be
completely out of fashion, except for special architectural weirdnesses.
There's the whole style thing; the gingerbread of the 1870's, or the
leaded glass of the 1920's.

Unfortunately, with old houses you also get little or no wall insulation,
leaky windows, faulty wiring, rusty plumbing, sagging floors, and other things
that cost to fix up.  My neighbor across the street bought a house that had
once been moved, and has eventually given up trying to fix the cracks in teh
real plaster walls.  Other owners have added drywall on top of the plaster,
which puts it even with the trim.  You also do not get the floor plan of your
choice, or a kitchen designed for the way they are now used.  Can you afford
to pay for some help in designing a new house that hassome of what you are
after in an old house?  What exactly is it that attracts you in old houses?
We are building a house that people think is 100 years old already, with
stucco siding (modern stucco, two coats smeared over cement board, which will
not crack like the older stuff does).  And you can do veneer plaster over
drywall to give a hard surface, and use firecode drywall over metal channels
to make the walls more soundproof than plaster walls generally are.  You can
put in plenty of insulation and make the house much more comfortable as well
as cheaper to heat.  There are used antique doors around, or metal imitation
that will not crack and insulate much better.  Locally made custom windows,
we know a company that makes good quality casement of fixed ones.  Ceiling
height is obviously adjustable, drywall comes in 10' lengths.   You are
welcome to a tour of our new 'old' house.  The stairs do not creak, there are
no drafts (rubber gasketing around the frames, rubber weatherstripping around
the sashes).  Klaus is also building a house he designed, using a new system
of poured concrete in styrofoam, cheap and draftfree and quiet.
        A new house can have as many electrical outlets as you need.  My
charming 1920's apartment has three plugs stuck in one outlet.  The ceiling
is cracked along the lines of the rocklath.  THe doors hit the floor when you
swing them.   THe plumbing is full of 'rock'.  The doors are thin plywood,
one layer.  Sashcords break easily.  It does have a nice oak floor but oak
flooring is still sold.

        jep wants to live in a mobile(ized) home!

I've seen keesan's house.  Very nice, except I'd worry a bit about
indoor air pollution.  It's also completely atypical of modern house
construction, and I shudder to think how much the typical house
contractor would charge to build such a house.

Most modern houses are built with fairly extensive amounts of particle
board, which I suspect will not age very well at all.  Particle board
does very interesting things when exposed to water, and even when dry,
does not have the give of wood or metal.  I suspect a lot of it will
tend to crumble with age, or worse if the inevitable plumbing accident
occurs.  And they will occur; modern houses are increasingly built with
plastic plumbing, which tends to crack with age.  Besides particle
board, most modern houses use fairly extensive amounts of other
materials (such as insulation, plastic, adhesives, and carpeting) that
give off high levels of VOC's, and it is rare to find a vent over the
stove that vents externally.  This, coupled with the "tight"
construction of most modern houses, means they're likely to have very
high levels of indoor air pollutants, and while the levels of some of
these will drop as the house ages, because of cooking, or smoking (at
least 25% of all households), indoor air pollution levels may remain
fairly high.

Modern houses are also commonly built with no trees nearby (and even if
they are, it will still take 20 years for them to grow), and have air
conditioning installed.  Even if the house had *perfect* insulation
(infinite R), air conditioning would still be necessary.  Household
activities, such as people, incandescent lighting, cooking, computers,
and such all generate heat.  Most modern houses don't have insulation
nearly that good, but do have nice dark roofs, windows, etc., that
absorb heat.  An increasing number of house buyers even in the north
expect A/C as a matter of course as well.  A/C, needless to say,
consumes electric power, and tends to contain various other materials
(such as the refrigerant) in it that aren't necessarily all that good
for the environment.  Environmentally speaking, it would be much better
to have trees to shade the house, and to open windows at night in the
summer.

The "design your own plan" is a nice luxury.  It is actually nice to be
able to include enough closet space, book shelves, and other small
touches that most architects seem to skimp on.  However, it's not that
big a benefit.  Few people know themselves well enough to be able to
come up with the ideal design the first time around.  Most likely, it
will only be discovered after the fact that that cool island in the
kitchen is actually always in the way, that the 3rd bathroom never gets
used, and that there really should have been 3 bedrooms, not 2.  Also,
the holographic entertainment center that you just *had* to get in 2030
just doesn't fit in the corner of the living room that you designed for
that 1998 big screen TV, and it's a real pain to change the batteries in
your electric car in the garage in the winter because the garage just
isn't quite long enough to roll the batteries out of the car.  While it
can be fun to design your own house, in the long run, the house you end
up with isn't likely to be *that* much more suitable than any other
house.

Besides, reusing old doors is *cheating*.  It's not quite a new house if
it has old doors, now is it?

I was in somebody's basement when I began thinking.  Entirely on accident,
mind you, so stand back.

The floor of this person's house was supported by 2x10"s.  *Long* 2x10"s. 
This is *expensive* wood.  That's because it's rare.  There's a lot of wood
put into new houses, and there are a lot of new houses going up.  Are there
any alternative construction methods that don't involve heavy wooduse? 
Deforestation is a problem and the somewhat wasteful uses of the wood (2x10's
are expensive because you can't make very many of them from one log) would
seem to be illogical.

Steel-frame houses.  They're becoming quite popular.

My favorite example of designs becoming outdated quickly is in my parents'
house, which got very extensively remodeled in 1988.  It includes a built in
computer desk, exactly the right depth for a Mac Plus or SE, but that would
not have room for a modern monitor behind a modern keyboard, as well as a
built in cubby for the fan fold paper that was used in dot matrix printers,
complete with a slot in the desk for the paper to go through to get to the
printer.  I think ink jet printers with sheet feeders were the standard home
computer printer by at 1992 or so, at the latest, but in 1988 that design
appeared to make a lot of sense.

Steel frame construction.  Reinforced concrete.  Adobe.  Etc.

How deep is that "SE" desk? (I want to compare that with what we use, which
is pretty shallow).

(Would it fit an iMac?)

Who uses particle board in current hose construction?  Are you referring to
oriented strand board that so many house use these days?  If so, OSB is
pretty good stuff.  I have a storage box outside made of the stuff.  It's
been out there for at least six years and the sides are covered only with
paint.  It has withstood the elements as well as any exterior grade of CDX
plywood can and has suffered only minor swelling.  It's pretty good stuff
for construction.  It is dimensionally stable with humidity and temperature
fluctuations (A sheet of plywood will bow every which way in the same
situation.) uses wood chips instead of thin layers of wood glued together
so it's less demanding for wood from our forests and it's about half the
price of plywood.  It is also rated to span greater distances than the same
thickness of plywood.
 
So far as air quality in modern houses, I have only four words: Air to air
heat exchanger.

You don't have to use 2 x ? for floor trusses anymore.  Engineered trusses
use little wood, are strong and will give you a very level floor since
they don't wag all over like a 2 x ? usually does. They are basically wooden
I beams.

We looked at new (and used) houses for a long, long time before deciding to
build.  Most of the new construction was designed for curb-appeal and to
maximize the return on the developers investment.  The '96 building code
has not even been adopted in Washtenaw Co. because the developers were
upset by the revised energy codes that increased their costs without
adding visible features for their customers.  Though we didn't design our
house to be an eye-catcher, it seems to be turning out that way.  Perhaps
people can see past the phoney facades without knowing it? Keesans house
does the same thing to people.

Here's a house for jep:

When the three-story house at 88 Trumbull was built circa 1890, the 
campus of The University lay three blocks away.  By 1928, however, the 
campus was expanding rapidly, and the university purchased the house.  
For 50 years, The University rented the Victorian to faculty members 
and, from 1954 to 1967, the school's Episcopal chaplain.  In 1978, the 
Institute for Social and Policy Studies moved in and converted all 15 
rooms to offices and meeting space.  Now the university is revamping the 
entrance to its north campus, so the house msut be sold and moved.

Clapboard and shingles shield the 5000-square-foot brick and woodframe 
house.  Natural light streams into the small foyer, which leads to a 
central spiral staicase.  Fanlights on each landing hint at the house's 
elegant past.  So does the 600-square-foot front room, where 
10-foot-high double-hung windoews set off a 12-foot-high ceiling.  On 
the third floor, low ceilings and a warm walnut-paneled hallway with 
decorative corner beads create a cottagey feeling.  There are two full 
bathrooms and two powder rooms, but all that remains of the kitchen is a 
butler's pantry and a cast-iron stove.

The University will sell the house for $1, and contribute $75000 toward 
relocation.  If the house has no takers by June 1999, The University 
will demolish it.

(Unfortunately for jep, "The University" mentioned here is Yale 
University.  I doubt the moving allowance would cover it.)

This item brings back a memory of when I was a kid and my uncle moved
the house he had just inherited. The move was only a couple of dozen
yards, but it is a two-story wood-frame house, and he did it by
himself. 

If you burn OSB, what kind of products do you get?  If it's soaked with
water (say, a leaking water pipe, or roof leak) what does it do?  What
happens to OSB after a hundred years worth of wear & tear?

Er, also, in modern construction what % of those "tight" homes have
air-air exchangers built into them?

We've discussed getting a modular house and having it put up on the 
property her parents are giving to us.  I'll probably enter a separate 
item sometime to ask what comments people have about modular houses.  
Anyway, we were talking one day, and she mentioned she always wanted to 
live in an old farmhouse that she could fix up.  I feel the same way.

Cost is very much a factor for us.  If we can find, move and install an 
old house for about the same money we'd spend on a modular house, then 
we can do it.  If it's going to cost twice as much, we just can't do 
that.

I don't know anything about this.  I've searched the WWW and haven't 
come up with a lot of information.  I saw one mention that it usually 
costs about $60,000 to move a house.  What all is covered with that?  
How far is a "typical" move?  What are the costs after you move the 
house, compared with the costs after you build a new house, or install a 
modular house?

These are the kinds of questions I'm interested in.  Thanks to everyone 
who has contributed to the discussion so far.  I'll try to update this 
item with information as I learn new stuff.

At least four houses have been moved into my neighborhood, including the
Museum on Main St, and a house on Miner near Hiscock (three story), which I
heard cost about $50,000 to move and renovate.  You still have to dig a
foundation and put in plumbing (well and septic field in your case), and gas
and electrical supply.  ANd probably redo a lot of the plaster.
Even if moving the house costs the same as building a modular one, make sure
it also include all the needed repairs and upgrading to plumbing and wiring.
Old houses may have galvanized piping.  And an older house will probably cost
a lot more to heat, maybe two or three times as much as a new one with at
least R-21 in the walls.  (You can't blow in more than about R-10, and heating
costs are inversely proportional to R-value, not even counting the drafts).
If you can afford it, get a furnace which takes in outside combustion air,
it will make the house a lot more comfortable as well as cheaper to heat.

We have heard that modular houses are more economical to build because there
is far less materials waste, labor is much cheaper, and they are often much
better built.  Our friends have one, 4 BR.  We just replaced the kitchen
faucet for them (after 7 years), because the builders cut corners.  And they
forgot to finish the chimney properly.  Get some sort of long warranty.  If
you build from scratch you can choose to use better faucets, etc., rather than
paying to replace them later.   Jim says a modular home is very predictable
and of average labor quality but below average hardware, and you end up
spending the money later.  The chimney in our friend's house was the fault
of the installer, not the factory which built the house.  We can recommend
a neighbor who is a foreman for a company in Chelsea that installs modular
homes, very reputable, you can talk to him about it. (Email us for info).
If you want something above average you have to spend more of your own time.
If you buy the house before it is installed, you can specify some changes,
such as omitting the two fireplaces and the carpet which our friend did not
want but had to pay for.  There are several books in the library on it.
Jim says our neighbor works for Sysco, and he left several employers before
that because he was not satisfied with the quality of their work, and has
stayed here for a while.  They have low employee turnover.
        New houses built from scratch can be better or worse than modular, they
are more unpredictable unless you know the builder personally.
        Re Klaus's statements:  Beauty is truth, truth beauty......

I have galvanized pipe.  It was installed in 1944.  Most of it is still
in fine shape.  One thing that does happen with old pipe is that
eventually it gets mineral deposits, and has to be replaced.  That's
true regardless of what material it's made of.  If I had to choose
between galvanized and plastic, I'd take the galvanized without
hesitation.

Particle board gets used extensively in the houses whose basements I have
frequented.  My theater company was more likely to use plywood for its own
floors, however, since the support given was often of a lower grade.  It was
only sets, after all.  

The family house, so to speak, which my dad and siblings grew up in and is
now the property of my uncle, is in the country north of toronto.  When we
visited last winter, a timber frame house was being constructed and we got
a partial tour by the owners, who by all accounts are very nice people.  It
was quite impressive.  They seemed to be enjoying it the last time I talked
to them this summer, too.

Jim's galvanized plumbing was leaking all over the basement.  He finally got
tired of putting buckets under it and switched to plastic.  Plastic is so
slippery that carbonate deposits do not build up in it, nor do they in copper.
Plastic also expands a bit if the water freezes in it, and it insulates the
lines so they do not lose heat (from hot water) or sweat (cold water), and
is quieter.  We are doing copper water and plastic sewer plumbing.

Since there no longer seems to be an interest in moving an old house, what
sort of modular house are you considering - size, number of stories, etc?
I assume that if you want to cut costs it will be a fairly regular shape and
not too large.  And be low maintenance.

        <tpryan sings: "Particle board, particle board, it's how I keep my
records stored".>

re 24+25:
        I don't have exact dimensions on that desk, and I don't have access
to the house since it's currently being rented out, but if I remember
correctly it's just deep enough for the Mac Plus with a few inches behind for
cables to have the keyboard pushed all the way up to the front of it, and have
the front of the keyboard be at the edge of the desk.  It actually does work
ok for notebooks, though, so as a computer desk it isn't completely obsolete.
It's the printer paper feeder that seems really strange at this point.

My impression is that the iMacs are considerably deeper than the Plus was,
and as such proabbly wouldn't fit, but I don't think I've ever actually seen
an iMac.

iMacs are deeper than a Plus - the result of having a 15" monitor. 

Particle board is not code approved for flooring or sheeting.  OSB is.
Particle board falls apart at the slightest hint of water.  It is commonly
used under counter tops, in the boxes for stereo speakers and in the $9.95
bookshelf you got from K-Mart that seems to have sagged a lot since you
put it up a month ago.  It is also extremely heavy, has no voids (Good
for speakers) Is easy to shape without splintering because it has no
grain.  OSB does.
 
The OSB subfloor in my house was exposed to at least 3 inches of rain for
two months before we got the roof on.  The OSB roof sat under several inches
of snow for a week before the roofers dared go up and put the shingles on.
The OSB in the subfloor did swell but its strength never wavered. I've
jumped on it as hard as I could, set scaffolding up on it, bounced my 
sidewinder off it from the scaffolding, bounced 10' 2 X 6's off it and
have 3 tons of tile stacked in two bedrooms.  OSB is good stuff.  I am not
concerned about the swelling because most of it will be covered with 2 to
3 inches of Gypcrete and tile.  In other areas my wife sanded down the
swelled joints with the belt sander and we put 1/2" plywood on top of that
for the radiant tube floor system.  I'm not worried about it.

The iMac is 18" front-to-back, plan view.

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