After stopping by my construction site this morning and learning that we had several serious snags and disconnections between our architect, the builders, and the local building department, I needed a little levity. Does lifting a house really need to be so complicated?
Not according to the Movato Real Estate Blog. They’ve actually figured out the exact number of helium balloons (the sort you can buy at any party supply store) it would take to lift a house based on average weight per square foot.
According to the interactive calculator you can find on their website, it would take roughly 77,646,000 balloons to lift my house. That’s a lot of hot air! By comparison, the White House would need a whopping 2,976,470,589 balloons. The one glitch I can see right off the bat – and they would be numerous – is how we could maintain the helium inside the balloons long enough for our crew to build up the foundation walls.
“Sorry, we had the house lifted and were all set to build the new foundation so your house would no longer endure any future flooding, but the darn helium escaped before could finish the job.”
Although our architect is full of it, unfortunately “it” doesn’t happen to be helium. Or ideas. Or time management proficiency. Or even accuracy, for that matter. So while the “lift” went off with nary a worry, the same can not be said for our architectural plans.
FLOOD SAVVY: Fight Flooding - Tips & Inspiration 