Why not just stay in the house while slowly raising it, bit by bit?
The key detail that you have left out of this post is "how high are you elevating it to?" Think about it: this is a major undertaking, and one that you don't want to have to repeat. And if you're already elevating it by three feet, it won't cost much more, I am pretty sure, to elevate it a further fifteen, with the added benefits of better views and more security against alligators.
Every day, wake up and shove one shim under a single corner of the house. In a few months, your house is raised by a couple of feet for free.
I knew you all would come through for me.
We're going up about 3', to be 7' off the ground. That's where the price jumps again.
3: ideally, don't tell Jammies you are doing it, and watch as he descends into neurosis, convinced that he is gradually getting shorter.
You're smart, heebie. I'm sure you're doing the right thing.
And if you're already elevating it by three feet, it won't cost much more, I am pretty sure, to elevate it a further fifteen, with the added benefits of better views and more security against alligators.
Greater vulnerability to eagles, however.
Because previously they were wary of swooping too close to the alligators.
It's a regular 8-bit video game around here.
If you go full Jetsons is a robot housekeeper included?
They said 3 weeks, and conventional wisdom says to double the cost and triple the time, so we think that around 6 weeks we can start getting testy and that we should be home at 9 weeks
I get that that's a helpful principle to give yourself a buffer for planning purposes. You don't want to plan one job right after another and have to cancel the second because the first one ran over, for example. Or spend every penny you have on one job and if there are unforeseen complications, oops, checks bounce. But I've kind of assumed that's a "better safe than sorry" thing, a precaution. If they've said three weeks I'd be testy if it's not done in three and a half, barring a very good reason.
It's a regular 8-bit video game around here.
No Country for Super Mario Brothers.
Install anti-eagle nets and swinging ropes over the alligator pits. Problem solved.
I think there's just a culture, in construction, to not account for inevitable "good reasons" - rainy days, problems getting the right person to show up because there was a delay so now they're on another job, the city all of a sudden is working on a water main and blocking their way, etc. It's completely predictable that there will be some of these, but since no single one is likely, there's a community norm to make a best-case-scenario estimate.
If your house is 7 feet off the ground, that's a whole flight of steps that isn't needed except when the river floods. Wouldn't it be better to just install the jacks to have them ready but just leave the house on the ground until it rains?
As long as your contractor isn't one of the Fyre Festival guys, I'm sure everything will be fine.
How does the elevation affect value? How much of the 70k would be recoverable?
18: no idea! Our house is already a weird oddity in the neighborhood.
Does this give you usable space under the house? I guess seven feet is a little low for anything but storage, but it might be nice storage. Put in a floor and some visual screening, and there's your shed.
Most of the houses are on the ground, ~800-1500 square feet, and about 30-50 years older than our house. There's one other one elevated on our street, and two more a block over that elevated since the flood. Almost none of the houses are 2 stories tall.
Of course, your shed might flood unless you go up another 7 feet.
I would never do this to you, but this is exactly the kind of thing that would make a fantastic public-radio story. Math professor mom of four evaluates reality; decides to accommodate climate change; spends real $ to do so; neighbors in her small TX city think she's nuts. It has all the elements of a powerful narrative.
23: It is hard to sell the most expensive house on the street.
22: Yes, some. We were hoping that we could park cars under there, but the arrangement of the piers makes that a non-starter.
The thing about storage is that it will flood a little on a regular basis and get covered in silt and mud. We can do some elevated storage that hangs off the house, though.
We do already stick bikes and inner tubes under the house, and I absolutely hate hunching over to walk around under there. I'm very much looking forward to standing up straight.
27: I don't think you're making a joke?
Dikes and levees can protect the storage area?
26: ha. We'd come off looking both plucky and smug and too pleased with ourselves by half, and I'd hate us.
10: Pitfall(s of living in Heebieville)
Your house doesn't sound so much "weird" as "nicer". That, I've always heard, makes it harder to sell the house and recoup the money spent on improvements than if you were putting money toward improving a cheaper hour.
The thing about storage is that it will flood a little on a regular basis and get covered in silt and mud. We can do some elevated storage that hangs off the house, though.
Or use it to store silt and mud. Then you won't notice when it floods.
Musing on 27: My parents also have the fanciest house on the block, and I did not enjoy this growing up because I felt self-conscious when friends fawned over it. I had a very strong sense of reverse-snobbery at a very young age.
And here I've created the exact same dynamic for our kids, and the neighborhood kids do in fact fawn over it, and I still feel very uncomfortable about the disparity. There is a season, turn, turn, turn.
"Our hour, in the middle of the street."
I should have gone with "and the painted ponies, they go up and down" for that last line. Oh well.
My parents had the fanciest house on the block too. They had trouble selling it when we moved for that reason. Or because the fittings and fixtures screamed 1970 and they sold the house in 1992.
You'll have to work on the appropriate mix of smug superiority and sympathy for when all your neighbors' houses flood and yours stays dry.
Is climate change the reason for the increased flooding risk or is it just because they've paved over the flood plain upstream?
Anyway, why not sue people upriver and see if they'll pay for it?
There's no way it would work, of course. But it would add drama to the radio show.
Plus, you hire a Latina lawyer because otherwise the whole thing is too unbearably white.
Is climate change the reason for the increased flooding risk or is it just because they've paved over the flood plain upstream?
Both! I think 14" of rain fell in two hours, in Halloween? I think that kind of dump could become more frequent with climate change.
Apparently Houston had a 1000-year flood last year. That is unreal.
There's no way it would work, of course. But it would add drama to the radio show.
Also because the river originates about a mile upstream of us. This was just raining on the town itself, all funneling to the river through various mostly dry creek beds.
I tried to hum 38 to the tune of the wrong song and it did not go well. (CSN our house)
When you mentioned it previously I thought you should do something like this:
An amphibious foundation retains a home's connection to the ground by resting firmly on the earth under usual circumstances, yet it allows a house to float as high as necessary when flooding occurs....
A buoyant foundation is a particular type of amphibious foundation that is specifically designed to be retrofitted to an existing house that is already slightly elevated off the ground and supported on short piers. The system consists of three basic elements: buoyancy blocks underneath the house that provide flotation, vertical guideposts that prevent the house from going anywhere except straight up and down, and a structural sub-frame that ties everything together. Utility lines have either self-sealing 'breakaway' connections or long, coiled 'umbilical' lines. Any house that can be elevated can be made amphibious.
I like this illustration the best because it definitely captures the "suck it, climate-change denying neighbor" vibe.
As Casey Kasem used to say, "Keep your house on the ground and keep it floating for the stars."
"suck it, climate-change denying neighbor"
I'm not sure this quite gets the appropriate mix I was referring to in 41.
The thing about storage is that it will flood a little on a regular basis
This indicates to me that you need to move house. Maybe I don't have enough American can-do-spirit or whatever, but you, a single household, are proposing essentially to fight a river. Nation states fight rivers and lose on a regular basis.
And have you considered pessimistically how much more of the drainage will be paved, and with what flood peak mitigation? This is Texas, so I'm snobbishly guessing the realistic answer is, "All of it, with none."
And if your stilts are nonetheless sufficient, what then happens to your unstilted neighborhood? Abandoned buildings? Refugee tenements? Demolition, leaving Geebie Manor splendidly isolated at the end of roads and utilities the city doesn't want to maintain for the sake of a single user?
One woman, one river. The ultimate quest for domination.
Yes, I was raised Protestant, why do you ask?
Presumably, the other houses get stilted.
OT: Wouldn't it be easier to steal something lighter than 27 cases of soda, sell it, and buy the Pepsi?
59: Per some of the Trump voter ethnography, soda is a secondary currency in Appalachia, because you can buy it with food stamps. So I assume they were going to sell it for meth.
Down the line, after public radio, this is going to turn into a remake of Wild River.
When I was a kid we'd fish on the middle Delaware River, and after a particularly awful flood a bunch of the houses by the river got stilted. Or more stilted, anyway; I think in a couple cases it was more than an extra story up. Last time I was by, a few years ago, they were still there, and there were a few epically nasty floods since then. People adapted to the way things were (although I'm sure it was tremendously expensive) and things continued as close as they could to how they were.
Pittsburghers, have you seen the cabins on Twelve Mile Island in the Allegheny? I don't understand how those can exist. Insurance must be impractical. I guess the locks save them from all but the worst floods.
If you're going to steal it, you don't need to worry about whether or not food stamps will cover it.
I believe that I recommended a larger version of this in an earlier thread about floods in Heebieville. I think my reasoning is still sound.
62.2: I had no idea there was that much built on any island too small to have a bridge to it.
Heroin, moonshine, beaver pelts, whatever.
I bet you could make bunch of moonshine with 27 cases of Pepsi.
If 63 wasn't a joke, the story was, people use food stamps to buy soda, which they resell for cash. So these people, being Appalachian hillbillies, stole soda because they knew it could be conveniently fenced. Or fermented.
I understand the role of soda as an alternative currency, but I still think the grocery store of full of things that would be easier to steal and just as easy to fence. Those people may be Appalachian hillbillies, but I have relatives from the towns mentioned in the story. It's not like they're so far removed from normal human society that they don't know what normal people steal.
Maybe they just rally like Pepsi.
Somehow "Grand Ole Opioid" has no Google results.
Do you hope to stay in the house when it floods, or do you plan to evacuate and just want greater peace of mind that the house will hopefully be dry when you return?
If you plan to stay, what do you plan to do with your vehicles during floods? Also, in that case you must have a good boat at the house for safety. And of course the boat needs to be secured to the house somehow.
76: The Geebies could store an inflatable raft inside.
You don't need a boat. A small dirigible would be fine.
Or a bunch of kayaks. The Geebies are clearly, by now, riverfolk. They know what to do.
In their new new stilted storage space! It's ok if a boat gets wet and muddy!
Realistically, I'd think you'd want to leave the house. Even if the electricity isn't cut-off, I'd be a bit leery before I turned on the lights in a house surrounded by water.
81: Sure, but you're talking to URPLE.
The smallest suitable multi-person mini submarine I was able to find by googling has a height of 8.5 feet. If you add an extra foot and a half to your planned elevation, you can store it underneath the house.
How does the cost of elevation compare to the cost of excellent flood insurance? The fact that it's already somewhat elevated makes it seem like you'd be able to get a decent deal on flood insurance, but I know nothing about flood insurance. I guess I'm not really clear on what fraction of the value of the house 70K is. E.g. if it'd cost say 150K to rebuild the house from scratch, then it seems weird to spend 70K to decrease the odds that you'll have to rebuild from scratch. But if it'd cost 300K to rebuild the house, then a 70K investment strikes me as more plausible.
There are smaller ones available, but then you'd have to decide which child to leave behind.
85: They say it fits 5 adults, so as long as the kids are still small, it should be able to evacuate the entire Geebie family in the event of a flood.
By the time the youngest gets to kindergarten, they'll know which one.
And if your stilts are nonetheless sufficient, what then happens to your unstilted neighborhood? Abandoned buildings? Refugee tenements? Demolition, leaving Geebie Manor splendidly isolated at the end of roads and utilities the city doesn't want to maintain for the sake of a single user?
This more or less happened in the 2015 flood. Although it was just our side of the street. I think gradually a lot of houses will be elevated and the remaining ones are cinder block rentals with jerky owners who shrug and say "I can just bleach down the house and re-rent it."
but you, a single household, are proposing essentially to fight a river. Nation states fight rivers and lose on a regular basis.
Well, it backs up. It's not a surging current. So the kids toys rise and get set back down a few feet away.
Do you hope to stay in the house when it floods, or do you plan to evacuate and just want greater peace of mind that the house will hopefully be dry when you return?
Leave with greater peace of mind. The cats can take care of the place while we're out.
How does the cost of elevation compare to the cost of excellent flood insurance?
Flood insurance is pretty cheap! But the toll of rebuilding a house from scratch seems awful. Especially if you lost all your belongings.
If you lost all your possessions, I heard that what you get is a brotherhood of man.
90: Ok, but you're still trying to live in the same place as a river.
A really nice river, clear blue and lined with parks!
Can't you just paint the bottom of the house with pitch, and buy some paddles? When it floods you can detach your house from its existing stilts and paddle around Heebietown. It will be so much cheaper, and the kids will love it.
Well, it backs up
Meaning you should pessimistically consider the drainage basin of the main river downstream too.
I'm just breaking your lady-balls though. Obviously you should do what jms says.
Oh hey, in the course of the Exxon book I learned that super-heavy oil from Venezuela is actually denser than water. So check if the contractor is Venezuelan.
Venezuelans and witches don't float.
How does the cost of the additional elevation compare to the cost of just putting the house on a platform on wheels (that you could drive away in the event of a flood)?
Personally I think you should just sell the house and get a houseboat. Problem solved.
But I'm not as attached to your current house as you probably are, which is why I suggested the platform on wheels.
106: Tank treads would allow the house to escape over uneven terrain, which might come in handy.
(So, is "irrevokably" an acceptable alternate spelling, or has the blog gone soft in its old age?)
Let me be the first to mention the ekranoplan option.
Re: storage
it wasn't quite the same thing, but I had a friend who had a tiny apartment, but with a large roofdeck - she bought a storage shed to put out there and stored half her stuff in watertight containers - it was immensely useful. All her stuff even survived Hurricane Sandy (the shed actually blew over because of the high winds, but all the stuff stayed dry inside the containers!).
Just a thought for things to do with all that extra space.
83
If they dig a 1.5' pit underneath their house, they don't have to worry about raising it more than 7'. That would probably be cheaper, especially if they get their kids digging starting now.
111
And they could easily fit their current house in an ekranoplan, so I'm not seeing any downside to this plan.
How does raising your house more compare with buying a smaller house outside of a flood zone and doing 70K of house expansion?
I don't think you get much expansion for 70K. Nothing transformative, at least. Maybe an extra room?
the ekranoplan option.
Ludlum.
I grew up in the nicest house on both my blocks. My parents' house was the nicest but not totally in a different league (our house was also sandwiched between 3 apartment complexes, so apples and oranges), but my grandparents definitely lived in a house that was noticeably nicer. I was always a bit self-conscious as a kid, but there was a moment that really stands out in discomfort. I was in high school when my closest friend in the neighborhood had come over with her much younger sister. We'd grown apart a bit in high school, so I didn't see her as much and her sister didn't remember all the time she spent at my grandparents house when little.* We were about 15-16 and the sister was about 8. When we walked into my grandparents' formal living room she gasped and said it looked like a palace, and then she asked if she could touch the upholstery on the chair. I felt like a rich asshole and my friend was pretty humiliated.
Growing up feeling like the rich bitch really came in handy in high school and college when I was actually surrounded by rich people, because it's kept me from ever feeling poor and it's also helped me maintain a bit of perspective about our fucked up levels of inequality. I know a fair number of people who consider themselves from modest backgrounds because they didn't summer in the Hamptons, or their parents only drove a C class Mercedes, and hearing people talk like that keeps me feeling revolutionary.
*My grandmother was the neighborhood grandmother to most of the kids, since their own grandmothers were usually too busy raising them and keeping the household together to have time to do grandparenty stuff. She'd throw birthday parties for each kid with a homemade cake and presents, she'd go to school on grandparents' day, and sometimes she'd take kids out for a day somewhere fun.
115- Our renovation a couple years ago was about $70k ($78k I think) and it wasn't really an expansion since zoning laws here are stupid, every existing house is already nonconforming so you need to apply for a variance for any external as well as some internal changes. But for that money we did all the changes I mentioned previously, getting a room for each kid, opening up attic space for storage/play, repainting (and in effect deleading the renovated areas), upgraded electrical (tore out all remaining knob and tube). I guess it depends on the current state of your house and whether there's any less-structural stuff that can still make the place more livable. Like being able to stand in your storage area.
117.3: This would fit nicely into a Four Yorkshiremen type riff:
"Where we grew up the entire block had to share one grandmother!"
118: well, the questions was could we fix a fixer-upper with 70K, but of course the only fixer-upper fixer that can fix a fixer-upper is true (true, true, true, true) love.
1. Are you doing this to prevent old people from visiting you?
2. Are you using round columns so you can paint them like candy canes?
Her, quote, "elevation" is a flood staycation. And by the way, I don't see no rain.
Elevating your house could also solve the kids' bedroom dilemma -- just put four shipping containers in the space under the house.* For a fun project to keep them busy this summer, put the kids inside and have them cut out their own doors and windows.
*Obviously, you'd have to let the kids back in the house when the river floods. Or I guess you could just buy them each a canoe.
The older houses in Hoquiam are on heavy concrete or cinder block first floors, all meant to be flooded, and there are cleats in the stairs up to the front door to hitch your boat to.
The amphibious houses are more delightful and strange , and if the flooding gets much worse, you can be the houseboats with the best moorage.
Had Baba Yaga chicken legs for the house been considered and rejected? Was it more the expense or customs difficulties?
During the latter of those two floods, the water was within a few inches of our floorboards.
You love your house, but you're anxious about the prospect of future flooding; you want to stay in Heebieville, but moving to another, suitably-sized house in the same area would be too expensive; and you can afford to do the improvement. I think it makes sense to elevate.
Is it the dumpy way it rains? Or just the clumpy way it drains? Or the way it always sprinkles in the woods?
What a mediocre earworm.
Also, this seems like a good plan to me for all the reasons JPJ states. (Elevation. Plan. I crack myself up.)
This seems like the right place to mention the McMansion Hell blog: http://www.mcmansionhell.com/dank
I am so fucking livid. My friend's 2nd grader had to change her shirt at school yesterday. It's a long sleeve shirt that fits snugly on a pudgy girl. It was not riding up or anything. It hung below the top of her pants. She had an undershirt on, no concerns about visible nipples or anything. As best I can tell from the photos, the only concern could have possibly been "this is what a snug shirt looks like on a pudgy 8 year old."
Principals are being met with, outrage is occurring, but I'm still so fucking mad I can't see straight, especially combined with the health care vote.
The Twitter reading* of this situation is that the rich family is going to spend a bunch of money to protect itself, but is going to lose it all anyway because their house value will plummet when the neighbors' homes are trashed. A metaphor for life in America, really.
*This is a helpful frame for "how is this going to look to a maximally uncharitable outsider?"
The twitter reading when Witt's expose is written up? Because I hope to god Twitter never otherwise gets ahold of me.
It's 5 pm here!
Levitate your house, heebie.
130 is outrageous. Pour the outrage on their heads.
What were they even thinking as the reason? I mean, the kid's eight, it's not as if they were worrying that it was alluring. Could the message have literally been "You're too fat to wear clothes that fit"?
You hope they're not worrying that it was alluring.
Right. I was thinking that they thought a pudgy eight-year-old in a tight shirt looks like she has breasts. If you remember that school administrators are literally the worst people in the world, it all makes sense.
136 is my best guess. Because we consistently outlaw shirts that reveal that women have breasts, and the best place to enforce that strictly is with a pudgy eight year old who only has childhood pudge-breasts.
You should go to Las Vegas. They're very good about supporting shirts which reveal women have breasts.
They support clothing that supports breasts.
The best/worst part is that the shirt design is literally just a big peace sign.
What a mediocre earworm.
This, on the other hand.
Since this is sort of a home-improvement thread, I'm going to ATM: is aircon in any meaningful sense an investment or should I just consider it an expenditure? I'm doing my annual "I really should sort out some cooling solution that's better than fans" research, and it seems I can get plumbed aircon for around £5k. Which is about double what I'm willing to pay if it's money down the drain, but I might consider if it might make the flat more saleable in 5-10 years.
It's "Con Air" and it was great. Nic Cage at his best.
What? Conair makes personal grooming products.
What does "plumbed" mean for air conditioning? Ducts as opposed to window units. I really believe strongly in central air, but I live in a warmer climate.
146 was me, being helpful. Or starting in that direction.
The pound has dropped enough that £5k doesn't seem out of line for what a system like that would cost here.
You could raise your flat up until it is at an altitude with cooler air.
140: Are you sure it didn't violate the rule against clothing that makes a political statement?
They made her put on a shirt that said War.
143 baffles me because I thought you lived in the UK.
Indeed. Once the Thermohaline shuts down that aircon will be a dead loss.
How come students can't wear shirts reading "Peace" but teachers can have swastika tattoos on their faces?
What does "plumbed" mean for air conditioning? Ducts as opposed to window units.
Not ducts (I looked into retrofitting cooling via my MVHR ducting but it looks like it would cost just as much and be less effective). It uses the mains water to do the cooling.
143 baffles me because I thought you lived in the UK.
I do, but I also live in a very well insulated new build flat at the top of a tower which gets a lot of direct sunlight. At the moment the "untreated" temperature when I get home from work is about 26/27 degrees, and in summer it goes above 30 no problem.
I don't think our teachers can even dye their hair unnatural colors or have anything pierced besides a single ear piercing for women.
143: I'd think of central air as an investment. For a residence, there are some shoppers who won't consider a home without A/C. By providing that feature, you'll keep them in the pool of people bidding on your property. Often, someone who wants central air won't think "I'll just bid 5,000 less and put in what I want" -- the idea won't even cross their mind, or they'll assume that something about your building would make it impossible... otherwise it'd have already been done.
157: Just one ear can be pierced? But what if it's the one ear that means that you're gay?
. At the moment the "untreated" temperature when I get home from work is about 26/27 degrees, and in summer it goes above 30 no problem.
Oh wow, I have no (informed) opinion on whether it's an investment or an expenditure but spend the money, man. That's too hot.
For a residence, there are some shoppers who won't consider a home without A/C.
I'm not sure there are many of those in the UK. I guess my real question is what the useful life of a domestic AC unit generally is, and/or what the maintenance cost is after 5 or 10 years.
At the moment the "untreated" temperature when I get home from work is about 26/27 degrees,
Good lord. That's pretty good going given the outside temperature is about 14. Maybe you should leave a window open?
I wouldn't have thought that you could get up to that temperature without active heating in this weather even if you were in a greenhouse.
I hate opening the windows in the spring. Stupid plants having sex.
I do leave several windows open, but a) That only does so much good in the summer when the outside temperature is well above my comfort zone, and b) there's an electricity substation just outside my window (and 10 storeys down, obvs) and the hum can be a bit annoying at night if the window's open.
Non-extreme measures just about suffice for most of the year, hence my reticence to spend so much money. But June/July/August are pretty intolerable.
I hate opening the windows in the spring. Stupid plants having sex.
It's the foxes that make it bad here.
I'm glad there's not enough fox semen around for me to have developed an allergy to it.
I now understand why you have people who tear them apart with dogs.
I do, but I also live in a very well insulated new build flat at the top of a tower which gets a lot of direct sunlight. At the moment the "untreated" temperature when I get home from work is about 26/27 degrees, and in summer it goes above 30 no problem.
So, it tops out in the mid 80s? And it's an apartment? This seems totally appropriate for a window unit, not central AC. Many apartments in Texas and Florida are just fine with window units.
What a mediocre earworm.
Don't make me link U2.
This seems totally appropriate for a window unit, not central AC. Many apartments in Texas and Florida are just fine with window units.
I'm pretty sure I couldn't use a window unit without replacing the whole window (they're hinged double glazed jobs), and I may not even be allowed to do that under my lease if I wanted to. Hence looking at the plumbed option.
If you still haven't found what you're looking for,
do these things exist in the U.K.? They sit on the floor and need vented out the window but it's non-obstrusive and easily removable.
It surprises me that central AC is only 5K, so maybe go for it, but if the main problem is too much sun through the windows of a well-insulated unit, and the temperature only goes up to the mid 80s in the summer anyway, you could just get solar shades. It would be a lot cheaper. I had them installed in my home (LA, poorly-insulated, outdoors very very sunny and regularly gets up to high 90s in the summer) and now I only turn on the AC a couple days a year. But I'm evidently a lot more heat-tolerant than you.
Perfect for where the streaks have no frames.
It surprises me that central AC is only 5K,
It's not central AC. It's split AC with the condenser and one wall mounted unit. I already have blinds on all the windows, including blackout material in the bedroom, but I am considering trying a solar film. I doubt it would suffice on its own though.
If you still haven't found what you're looking for,
do these things exist in the U.K.? They sit on the floor and need vented out the window but it's non-obstrusive and easily removable.
They do, and that's what I've researched in the past, but most of the accounts I've read suggest that they're relatively noisy and not as effective in a climate like the UK. The models available in the UK seem to be pretty underwhelming value-wise compared to the US ones, too. Window-venting is a no-no, at least in the bedroom, given the hum previously mentioned. I am seriously considering one for the other rooms, though.
179: Wait, I can't keep playing with you? ...or without you?
Domestic A/C units have a lifespan of about 20 years (with some variation, I'm sure). The unit you're looking at sounds similar to the systems that are often used to chill server rooms, etc. It seems worth investigating.
Also, thank you JPJ, for your explicit, clear-headed support, both here and in the earlier thread!
