Moving the Capen House
Transcript of 12:00 to 17:30

Guest: After consulting with the movers and looking at the many pieces of the puzzle that came together we concluded that it was very viable and made our plans the house over the lake with a barge.
Host: How do you actually do that because I’m guessing, first of all you’ve got to get a barge that’s big enough to put this house on and to put that barge on the lake, you would have to move the house from its position on the property onto the barge on the lake, or just walk me through that process and how it works?
Guest: Well, what we do is we have to assemble the barge, the barge is big, it’s going to have to be 40 feet by 60 feet and so you can’t just come up with a 40 foot by 60 foot barge, truck it into town and roll it to the dock. So the way it’s done is the barge is comprised of individual smaller barges that typically 10 feet wide and 20 or 40 feet long. Those are brought in on flatbed trucks brought down onto the property, dragged down onto the lake into the water, and then another piece and another piece. Those pieces are pinned together to form a large raft. And you can keep adding those individual pieces until you get a large barge as long as you need to carry the weight of a house. The way that the house is calculated and by knowing what it’s made out of and the sizes, and so, the barge is assembled and then a couple of small motor boats one in the front and one in the back pull and push it slowly across the lake over to where the house is currently located. It comes up to the shore and then a ramp is built from the barge up onto the shore, obviously a strong ramp. Then the house has to be cut into two pieces because the lot is very narrow down by the lake and the constraints of some existing trees and another building makes it such that the house would not fit between them in one piece. So we have to cut the house in half into two pieces, and we will move each piece one at a time up on wheeled dollies, roll it down to the lake, roll it over the ramp, onto the barge, and then the barge will be motored across the lake where each half will be brought to its eventual resting place. That process is repeated for the second half.
Host: So do you have to build a ramp on the other side to get the house from the barge onto the property?
Guest: That’s right. The ramp has to be assembled again on the other side to allow the house to roll off because the barge, although only drops about 3-3.5 feet of water, it can’t just literally go right onto the shore. It can stop pretty close, but there’s going to be some gap there that has to be bridged with the ramp, the ramp has to be wide enough and strong enough that a 100 tons for half of the house can roll over and head up, go on up the property.
Host: And, how do you actually do that? Do you just back a truck down to it, throw a rope over it and pull it, or?
Guest: Well, a variation of that. It’s done with some heavy equipment that is, would be, in front of the house, and these would be tow trucks and they have wenches on them, and steel cables are taken down to the house and imagine if you would like a wagon where you would hold the handle and you would pull the wagon. Well the house will have a couple of connecting points and the steel cables will go to that the steel beams of the house are actually sitting on. And they will go back up to these tow vehicles, which are anchored in place by some heavy front-end loaders so that those don’t slip down towards the house. And so those things start wenching the house forward and the house up on wheeled dollies so it starts rolling slowly but it does, it rolls forward. So it’s slowly pulled or wenched forward and then as it gets closer to the wenches, those are then moved further up the hill and the process is repeated where it is wenched along a little bit at a time until it gets to the final destination.
Host: So this is a major engineering project
Guest: And, there’s also a large dock and boat house down on the lake exactly where the barge has to go and where the house has to roll through it. So we have to take the boat house and the dock and put them on it, there own little barge, cut them lose, float them off to the side out of the way, so that we can make way for the large barge and the ramp and the house to roll onto it. And once those house pieces are moved and out of the way we have to float the boat house and the dock and put it right back in the original position. So there are complicating, challenging factors that add to the excitement and fun of the whole thing.

Transportation by water * Bring in Barge (40x60) * Compromised of several 10x20 or 10x40 smaller barges * Brought on from flatbed trucks * Each piece dragged onto lake and pieced together to form Original said size Barge * Small motor boats are placed to the front and back of Barge to help carry over House across the lake * Build Ramp

Dismantling of House (2 Pieces) * Cut House in half into 2 separate pieces