Moving 24x22 garage.

[nwphil]

I am planning to move an old 2x4 frame, 22x24 ft garage 2 miles down the road to convert to a maple syrup shack. I've never moved a building before. Suggestions to me, so far, are to back a low boy trailer under it or to put it on skids. I have a 300 yard, 11% grade to go down. The shingles and siding will be removed to make it fairly light. Generous weight estimate would be 3000 lb. My largest tractor is a 90 HP 4010. Any advice and precautions are welcome. Thanks in advance.

 

[newbury]

If you have a FEL
Raise it up.
Get beams across the back.
Put pallet forks on your 3pt.
Back the tractor w/ pallet forks on the FEL in so the 3pt lifts the beam behind you
put a beam in front to support it on the FEL pallet forks
Do a little strapping
Drive it down

w/o FEL it would be a little more rigging.

/edit - wasn't my idea, someone else did similar on TBN several years ago.

 

[fidowanttobe]

Have done a few on the farm. Garages are easier because of no floor. Skids are for short distances I feel and for buildings with floors. The easiest one we did was, braced it from sidewall to sidewall with diagonal braces from center up to the top plate, handyman jack it up, block, repeat, repeat, repeat, until it was high enough to back a trailer under the horizontal sidewall braces, let it down to the trailer bed, strap it and drive slow. The bottom plate was only 18" or so off the ground, but you might need to go higher for the terrain you have. The only demo necessary was the removal of the garage door(s) and/or the wall between doors if it has 2 to get the trailer in the middle. The only real expense was the 2x12's we bought to go across from wall to wall. all in all, it was surprisingly easy. Good luck!

 

[bcp]

...22x24 ft garage 2 miles down the road...

Public road? How wide is the road? Overhead clearance-wires, trees, bridges? Curves or corners with tilted road?

Bruce

 

[CDN Farm Boy]

Unless you need the shingles and siding off for some other reason, I doubt the effort to remove them is worth the work for weight savings alone. I like newbury's idea if you have fel on the 4010 and no major roads to deal with.

 

[erda]

About 30 years ago we moved an old single garage across the yard and down a small hill. We cross braced the door, but nothing else-it was built of rough cut 2*4 with ship lap at 45* on the outside, so plenty strong. Jacked it up with jack-alls and lowered it onto skids made from poplar trees. Still standing today, and none the worse for wear.

Now down the road would be a different issue. I'm sure that someone would get their shorts in knot if you tore up the road and didn't have any permits. Make sure to cross brace the doors and walls for sheer forces.

 

[Cord]

Here's my garage move from last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-62o6KIDPs We tried to shoot some time-lapse of the initial lift and move, but the program kept on crashing. I used a 10,000lb car trailer and it was well within the trailers capacity. The key is to triangulate everything. Thankfully, I had a good source for 4x6 timbers so I didn't have to worry about buckling, but that could be an issue with 2xX material. I started by attaching a ledger around the bottom of the wall. The ledger was screwed to every stud using timber screws. I then triangulated every corner and braced the walls to the loft floor. After that I positioned Hi-Lift jacks under the ledger and tried to get as close to the corners as I could. The jacks must be braced to the floor in two directions as they will try to buckle when lifting. Once we got the garage up in the air, we pushed the trailer under it. Positioned a couple of 10" I-beams across and then lowered the building onto the beams. We did pretty good as the building lifted as one unit and never creaked from racking. Did have some problems cutting the bolts off as some bolts were hidden under a stud. Once the bolts were all cut the jacks had more than enough capacity to lift the building.

 

[nwphil]

Neat idea to do it with front and back forks! however, a Durango barely fits under the door.... I do not have a tractor substantial but low enough with FEL to do it this way.
... the shingles and siding are two reasons why it is getting moved elsewhere....
Standard width road. just steep grade.
Videos give good idea of bracing. I doubt I would have done that much...
Looks like it will be on a wagon.. We'll see how and when it goes.
Thanks for suggestions!

 

[bigtiller]

If you use a pair of 2x12's for the lifting beams, use more than one on the front and back side. I moved a 20D by 24W about 100 feet on an equipment trailer and only used one 2x12 on each end. when the garage was lifted, the 2x12's bowed down but held the load okay. But when we started moving they started swaying back & forth and tried to twist a little. It was a little precarious but we made it, I'm glad 100' is all the further we had to go.

 

[MossRoad]

If its a public road.... yikes. Insurance, permits, possible road closed, etc... that's for another thread I suppose. As for just moving it... There's a company in St. Paul, MN that recycles garages. They move them all the time. In a nut shell, they brace along the sides and back about 5' up, then brace the sides together across the span about 5' off the ground. Then they back a trailer in, attach to the bracing, and lift off the foundation and drive away. Since you don't have a lift trailer, you could basically do the same thing, but jack up the garage before backing the trailer in, then lowering it down onto the trailer.

Here's a link to that companies website. Hope it gives you some ideas...

Garage Moving Requirements Minneapolis