Liftwell Elevation Co. · Boonmere Flats & the Carraway Fork · House raising since 2011
The river came twice. We make sure it cannot come third.
Liftwell raises houses out of the floodplain — the whole house, on unified jacks and crib stacks, held level to the millimetre while new foundation walls rise underneath. Elevation certificates, permits, the utility re-routes and the grant paperwork are run from this office, because a lift is an engineering project wearing a construction project’s clothes, and both halves have to be right.
212 houses lifted since 2011 · every one passed its elevation certificate on the first inspection · set down level within half an inch, in writing
The second flood took the furnace, the photos and my mother’s piano in one morning. The third one — the one after Liftwell — took nothing at all. It stopped under the new stairs and waited, and then it left. That is the entire review: the water came, and it could not reach us.
The office, in figures
Services & rates
The lift card
Card rates from the Boonmere Flats seasons, 2023 — 2026. A lift is quoted as a fixed number after the soil borings and the flood study are read — the two documents that decide whether a house can be raised at all, and both are ordered before you are asked to sign anything.
Raise & re-set, frame housefrom $46,000
Unified jacks, crib stacks, new extended poured walls under the lifted house, stairs and landings rebuilt to code
Raise & re-set, masonry two-storeyfrom $92,000
The heavy lift: steel channels through the walls, engineered sequencing, new reinforced stems and a braced gable package
Detached garage or shopfrom $19,500
Same lift discipline, smaller ballet — usually one day off the slab, one week on the new stems
Utility re-route package$6,400–11,000
Gas, water, sewer and service entry cut, extended and re-certified for the new height
Elevation certificate & permit package$1,900 flat
Drawings, flood-zone determinations, the county permit run and the certificate filed at completion
Grant & insurance paperworkno charge with a lift
FEMA and state mitigation applications assembled from our file — 62 funded to date
What we do
The lift, up close
The lift day
Twenty unified jacks on one pump, lifting at the same rate to the same mark — the house rises a foot an hour and the level never leaves the plate. Crib stacks follow it up, a course at a time, like masonry made of timbers. Nobody hurries; a lift is the slowest fast thing in construction.
What goes under
New poured walls rise inside the crib — rebar tied to engineer’s drawings, forms set to the height the flood study demands, plus the freeboard the county quietly wishes you would add. When the house comes down, it comes down onto walls built for the next hundred years, not onto blocks stacked for the next hundred days.
Weeks 1–6
Flood study & permit
Soil borings, the base flood elevation read for your lot, and the drawings that say how high and how. The county permit, the utility notices and the grant applications all file from this one package — six weeks of paper that buys thirty years of dry.
Week 7
Detach & brace
Utilities cut and capped, porches and additions braced or separated on plan, interior doors wedged, the piano out of the house. Cracks are mapped and photographed so everyone agrees on before.
Week 8
The lift
Steel channels in, jacks on the unified system, and up — a foot an hour, level to the millimetre. The house spends its nights on crib stacks, held by friction and arithmetic, and it is the quietest part of the whole job.
Weeks 9–11
Walls up under
Forms, rebar and pour inside the crib; new walls, new anchor bolts, new openings for the re-routed lines. The house waits above the work like it is being shown its own future.
Week 12
Set down & close
The house comes down onto its new walls — half an inch is the tolerance, in the contract — the utilities re-certify, the stairs and landings land, and the elevation certificate is filed with the photos from every phase of the lift.
The office sequence
Twelve weeks, two days of them airborne
Twelve weeks from study to certificate, and the house is off its foundations for two days of them. The river does not consult the schedule — that is why the paperwork runs first.
The set-down clause
The house comes down level within half an inch over the whole plate — measured, photographed, and written into the contract before the first jack arrives. Outside that tolerance, the correction is ours: re-lift, shim or re-set, until the level says what the contract says. Every lift also carries a ten-year warranty on the new walls and the anchorage.
Boonmere Flats & the Carraway Fork, 2024 — 2026
Lifts from the file
Six lifts from last season’s file, photographed at set-down and at the certificate walk. The river in the fourth photograph came nine months later and took nothing.
Two contractors said our masonry house "could not be lifted safely." Liftwell ran the channels through the walls, held it level for a week on crib while the stems cured, and set it down so true the doors still latch a year later. The elevation certificate passed first inspection and our flood insurance dropped by three quarters.
The office did the FEMA application we could not face — assembled from their file, in their format, funded the following spring. Our share of the lift was less than the furnace the second flood ate. When the third flood came, it parked under the stairs like a dog that knows.
Asked at every kitchen table
The five every family asks before they sign. The office line answers the rest, flood seasons included.
Does the house survive the lift?
Yes — and mostly without drama. A unified system lifts every point at the same rate, so the house never flexes the way a towed building does. Cracks mapped before are compared after: plaster corners may hairline, and that is the honest list. In 212 lifts we have never failed to set one back down serviceable, and the set-down clause covers the level in writing.
How long do we have to be out?
Utilities are cut before the lift, so plan on eight to ten weeks away — the lift itself is two days, the walls under it are the calendar. The certificate walk and the re-certifications come last. We sequence detached garages and additions around families where we can, and the schedule in your contract is the one we keep.
How high should we go?
The flood study sets the minimum — base flood elevation plus the freeboard the county rewards. We advise one step above the study where the lot allows, because the incremental cost of the last foot is small and the insurance and resale math both love it. The certificate is filed at the height you chose, forever.
Is it worth it versus selling?
Run three numbers: post-lift insurance, post-lift resale, and the cost of the third flood. On the Flats, lifted houses have sold at premiums above the lift cost in every season since 2019, and the grant programs exist precisely because raising beats repairing at public expense too. If your numbers say sell, we will say so — our file is full of houses, not commissions.
What happens to the garage and the porch?
They are designed, not discovered: the drawings separate or brace every attachment on day one. Attached garages usually lift with the house on their own crib; slab porches are commonly detached, lifted or rebuilt to the new level; decks are re-hung at the new grade. It is all on the one permit, and all inside the card’s fixed number.
Flood-season triage is a real thing here — studies ordered year-round, lifts scheduled the week the water drops · (555) 048-3395 · lift@liftwellelevation.example
Read your lot first
Street, town, how close the water has come, and whether it has ever been inside. The flood study and the soil borings run before any quote — $1,100, credited to the lift — because the ground and the map decide what is possible before any of us do. lift@liftwellelevation.example