Welcome to Flood Savvy – we’re glad you’re here!  Our house used to flood. You, too? Ready to do something about it? Read on.

Undertaking a house elevation for flood mitigation project is no small feat. This section goes through the steps in the process, one by one.  The road to completion was mired with mistakes.  Reading through our house elevation process will help you see where we hit road blocks so maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to avoid them.

Step One – Preparation

Step One entails the preparation phase. Determining how high to lift, preparing drawings for the project, obtaining permits, finding alternative housing, etc. This is a big one. Choose your team wisely because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with them. The drop down menu under this section has several articles related to this part of the process.

Step Two – Lift

Step Two is the lift or elevation of the house. This team of experts lifts the house up out of harm’s way. Usually, one company handles the actual lift of the house and another company handles the rebuild or construction phase of the house.

The cost is typically arranged up front with no hidden surprises. The timeframe is known meaning you can plan when the house will be lifted. The caveat here is this team has to work in cooperation with the construction team.

Step Three – Rebuild

Step Three is the rebuild. This is the most expensive and most time consuming part of the whole project. The construction team begins by prepping the house for the lifting company (cut/cap water line, gas lines, etc) as well as removing all exterior stairs and decking prior to the lift.

After the house has been elevated, the construction team rebuilds the house adding a new foundation, adding new access stairs, building a deck, etc. Here is where you’re more likely to run into overages and time delays. It accounts for the bulk of the whole project.

Step Four – Landscaping

Step Four is landscaping. After the construction is complete, the house will need to be re-landscaped. All foundation plantings and grass surrounding the house will be destroyed. We managed to salvage most of our plants by temporarily planting them in the back of our property out of the way.

The good news here is it gives you the opportunity to get creative with the new landscaping. You’ll find plenty of ideas under the landscaping section on this site. 

Step Five – The final step

Here you move back in, determine what was damaged, and commence to fixing what needs to be fixed. For example, in our case, every wall had cracks from the lowering of the house back down to the new foundation. We had to paint every room. We had issues with our kitchen as well. Every house will be different.

This is also when you reach out to your flood insurance agent to get your rates adjusted. There is paper work involved. Be patient, be persistent, get your hard earned reduction in flood insurance rates.

The blog posts in the drop down menu are not in chronological order. Sort through to find the topics that seem the most useful to you.

The main blog roll has all the posts published in reverse chronological order, meaning those published first are pushed down every time a new post is added. If you’d like to read through the project in order, scroll to the very beginning (bottom of the blog roll) and work your way backwards to the most current one.