Lifting houses: an out of the ordinary profession

Anyone driving through Lennoxville recently may have noticed a change at 212 Queen Street. Under the oversight of the Guertin house moving company, the distinctive local home has been lifted into the air to have its original stone foundation demolished and replaced.

“It opens up new possibilities,” said Mario Guertin, explaining that although the lift is not something that people might be used to seeing on a daily basis, his business is not suffering for lack of work in the area.

Guertin represents the third generation in his family to work in the business of raising houses, and his son is already working alongside him to keep the business going into the future. Asked about what prompts someone to lift their house, he said that the family business largely works on older buildings like the one in Lennoxville whose original stone foundations are crumbling. As the foundations,

which as sometimes little more than stacked stone, cave in, so too can houses that would otherwise continue to be safe, comfortable living spaces for years to come.

The house mover said that the process of rebuilding a foundation also has other advantages in that it often adds significant amounts of space to a building, as new foundations open up new options for basement rooms.

Guertin did not hide the fact that the work is expensive, but he said that in an era where house and material prices are on the rise, many homeowners are finding that it is cheaper to move an existing house to a new location than to buy new or build from scratch.

The other aspect to moving a house, which he said is more common in his English speaking clients, is the desire to preserve heritage architecture. Rather than see heritage buildings crumble, Guertin said that he has seen many people elect to invest in relocation, including one project as recent as last week where his company moved a 140 year old house on the Georgeville road.

“It is very particular as a job,” he said, reflecting that the work is very physically demanding and can vary a lot from one job to the next. He also pointed out, from the business point of view, that since most people will never move a house in their lives, let alone do it more than once, every customer is new and has no frame of reference for how the job is done. Because of that, he said he has gotten quite used to seeing people photograph and film his work.

Asked about the particulars of lifting and moving a house, Guertin said that every company that does it will do things a little bit differently.

“We have our way of doing things,” he said, stressing the fact that the skills he is now passing on to his son have been honed over the years from lessons first learned by his grandfather.

That generational knowledge is the basis for Guertin’s company slogan, “we may not be the biggest, but we are the best.”

On changes to the business since it first got started, the house move said that the fundamentals of the job are still the same but some things, like workplace safety standards and building materials, have changed. In particular he pointed out that the shift to building with softwood has made the job easier because it makes houses lighter

Although one thinks of a house as a sold structure from bottom to top, Guertin explained that part of what makes his family’s work possible is the fact that, particularly in the older buildings, the house is really just sitting atop the foundation and can, once properly secured, simply be raised up.

“It’s out of the ordinary to be sure,” he said, encouraging people to follow the progress of the new foundation construction in Lennoxville over the coming days, provided that they keep a safe distance from the work site itself.