Raising a house can be tricky business. Especially when the existing crawl space is very shallow, as was the case in this Point Pleasant home. The start of the process required some excavation in front of the house to allocate room for the steel I-Beams to get under the first floor joists. The team moved in with their equipment, 60 long steel beams, and slowly added wood cribbing. Cribbing is usually accomplished with blocks of wood, often 4"x4" or 6"x6" and 18"-24" long. Soft woods, like spruce and pine are often preferred because they crack
slowly and make loud noises before completely failing, whereas stiffer woods may fail explosively and without warning. We wouldnt want any of these blocks failing without warning when holding up a house! The steel I-Beams sit on top of the cribbing in order to support the structure. These beams will support the load of the entire house until we rebuild the new foundation at the new flood elevation. In this case the house weighed 60 tons (as measured by the hydraulic jacking system)!
