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Duane Bozarth
 
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wrote:

....
...I have a barn that is a steel barn with wood
framing. It's roughly 70 feet long and 30 feet wide. The bottom is
where animals used to go, and was originally rock walls. The top is a
heavily built wooden frame with tin on the sides and roof.


That's roughly same size as one grandad built--38x66. It's frame
construction, however on poured foundation w/ wood siding and shingle
(now shake) roof...

The problem is that the rock foundation is gone on one side and one
end. All that is holding it up are the oak 6x6 posts in the center,
but the corner where the both missing walls are, settled about 30
inches and was literally floating. When I bought this farm, one of
the first things I did was shove a few massive rocks under that corner
to keep it from settling more. Today I decided to see if I could lift
it. Using a common Hi Lift tractor jack, I was able to raise that
corner about 15 inches, or half the height it needs to be raised to
get back to normal. Lifting that 15" not only had my eyes bulging out
to operate the jack, but caused the jack to bend. However, I have it
stabalized now, using a stack of concrete blocks under that corner.


Damn lucky you didn't kill yourself w/ that make-do contraption...

Raised ours enough to replace sill plate on one end and half of the
length using three 20-T bottle jacks and several 4x6 to spread load
across several rafters.

....

Either way, I am posting this because I need more jack power. I have
a 20 ton bottle jack, but those things lift so little at a time. I
believe I can only lift 4 inches before I have to put more blocking
under the jack for another 4". The tractor jack is not strong enough
and neither am I to lift any higher with that jack. I do also have
some of those old screw jacks, but those things are harder to use than
bottle jacks, but will come in handy for temporary posts.

Does anyone have any idea what other jacks are available for this sort
of thing?...


There are long-lift versions of bottle jacks that will do the job
although you will need several lifts even there. But, they're expensive
and I would be very reluctant to trust the really cheap Chinese imports
for this kind of work where my life is at stake.

If I had to make such a high lift, I think I'd call the guys local here
who do house moving and borrow/rent a couple of lifts from them as it
will be pretty pricey to find the capacity and the length I'm thinking.

As for how much you're trying to lift, would need a better picture more
data to actually guess, but probably not more than about 10T I'd guess
in a given lift.

My recommendation is to go slow and steady rather than try to get the
whole thing at one go. It's possibly going to get more unstable as you
get higher owing to the long-term "set" the building has taken over the
years. Whatever you do, be careful--I'm amazed you didn't have a
disaster already w/ the over-stressing of the jack you already did.