Moving the House

Mar 14

About 9 months after we first embarked on this journey for a removal house, it is truly bizarre to excitedly announce that this week, Pelham House took the 114km journey on the back of a truck from Coorparoo in Brisbane, to our lot in Montville in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. Throughout the process we have been asked what the process was, so we wanted to share our experience of the first part of all of this, moving the house.

Saving the date?

Assuming that you have council approvals and everything sorted out, there are still a tonne of factors that go into when you can actually move your house. For us, the house was moving in two parts, over two separate nights, and included crossing a railroad track. We were told the highways you go on, and the individual streets taken can vastly change how complicated some of this all is, but for the most part, the bulk of the timeline was dictated by a few key third parties:

NHVR - The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (a federal govt body) had to give the house movers approval to drive a bloody house on the highway understandably and initially this was a 3-4 week turnaround. I believe once you have the greenlight for that, it can be postponed fairly easily but this is a critical step before anything else can really happen.

Police - We had two cop cars have to accompany the house to escort it safely on each of the nights that the house moved. The police had around a 2-3 week turnaround and dictated the date they were available. I was given a ballpark cost of $4k for this escort service but it was built into the move costs with the house mover and I was told that during busy times like schoolies, they can sometimes just give you a different date and say they aren’t available until then. We were worried about COVID border closures and stuff for a while but eventually that wasn’t an issue. The one thing with the police our house movers mentioned was that if you postpone the move, you have to pay them upfront again, and they can take over a month to refund you. Since ours was postponed twice, that is a fair chunk of cash for the house movers to fork out so just a heads up on postponements. Interestingly I was told the police are the ones who dictate the whole 12:01am start for these house moves as the permit starts at 1 minute past on the day. That plus I guess a house in peak hour traffic probably isn’t fun?

Queensland Rail - Since our house was crossing the train tracks at Landsborough, we required a staff member from QR onsite at the crossing to confirm no trains were going to blast through our house like you see on those youtube fail videos. Luckily for us, there were no trains. However, when we first got postponed, our movers tried to get the date postponed ASAP but since QR is basically a government office they have a 3 week turnaround and they weren’t in the office over Xmas. When we got postponed again, it was again the railway that caused further delay by a week. One other thing is that train tracks make crossings when it is wet even more risky, so that made any rain basically a no bingo for the house move.

Energex - I think if there are sketchy low power or electricity wires, then the movers can request the energy company to come also be an escort and apparently they come out with what I am picturing is a giant reverse Bo Peep shepherd’s pole and they push the power lines up so the truck/house can pass safely underneath. I don’t believe we need these as I didn’t see them anywhere but was told they might be an influence too.

Delays and postponement

Funnily (or actually terribly unfunnily) enough we had a few postponements to our move not even really due to any of the above.

Original house move: Dec 18th, 2020

The first delay was due to heavy heavy rain from an early storm season hitting in mid December 2020. Big thunderstorms, and a house in fairly good shape were not deemed a good mix and reluctantly but understandably the day before the move, the house movers had to postpone in the best interest of the house and their crew. Two days before the move, we had handwritten little notes to our neighbours letting them know what was happening, asking if they could keep their cars off the road, and in a desperate effort to not win “Shitty neighbours of the year”, we also threw in some cheap ear plugs from the chemist. Since we obviously had nobody’s email or phone numbers, this had to be embarrassingly retracted with new notes the day before our move was scheduled. We also had to push a tonne of contractors back but it gave us the opportunity to get the yard a little more prepared. The Xmas period was terrible for trying to get a hold of the government folks needed to get a new date so eventually it was rebooked for mid January.

House move date #2: Jan 19th, 2021

The next delay was due to a last minute visit from the Brisbane City Council the day before we were supposed to move the house, where they determined that a tree on the existing house site was unexpectedly over 7m high and would therefore have to be officially assessed before being cut down. Initially we were told that would mean a mandatory 30 day review process where neighbours could protest and put forth reasons why the tree was significant etc. This was a brutal blow to our optimism, all our timelines shattered again and for over a month now. Not to mention, we had put the handwritten notes in the letterboxes of our neighbours again, and therefore in a scramble the night we found out, we had to rush up to the street and let all the neighbours know the house wasn’t coming AGAIN. Luckily for us, after the council took the two weeks to review the case (with us following up daily and even getting out to the lot to measure the bloody tree ourselves) we found out it was a Leopard tree, an invasive species that while used for street trees in some areas, was also considered a pest in other areas and the Council agreed it was OK to remove without seeking consultation from the neighbourhood. Having to rebook everything again sucked super hard and our movers had to lock in a date before hearing back from Council so frustratingly the date was kicked pretty far down the road on this one and was slated for March 3rd.

House move date #3: Mar 3rd, 2021

At this point, things were looking good and on the plus side, we now had everyone in the street’s emails who had been friendly neighbours and responded via text or email to let us know their info. Which as it turned out was needed, because two days before our move, I called the house movers to check in, to be told that the move had been pushed back another week due to delays with Queensland Rail. We had a new date which was March 8th and 9th and in the end the weather was pretty sketchy on the 3rd anyway so we thanked the house moving gods and resisted the urge to flip a table in fury. Patience young renovator.

House move date #4: Mar 8th, 2021

No delays. Thank fuck for that.

Moving day

As mentioned, the house moved over two separate nights and while there was a slight sprinkle, we had two solid days and nights of pretty much good weather.

The first half

I turned up to the house around 11pm to see half of the house sitting on the back of a trailer. Precariously, I hopped the fence to snap a video. After filming around a bit, a man in a roadwork orange tradie shirt loudly whispered at me from the dark of the street. “Are you the owner?” he questioned and I stuttered quietly as I tried to seem as non-suspicious as I could, but in the end he realised I wasn’t a graverobber and I had to chat to this lovely fellow who was keeping watch on our house before the big move. Freckles was his name and he had been in the house moving business for decades and said he had to keep watch as they had had issues in the past with theft. I ducked up to the car to get a quick 40mins of shuteye before the trucks arrived. The next part all happened really quickly. The cops arrived, a pilot “wide load” escort arrived, the truck arrived, then they backed up to the trailer like it was a Saturday morning fishing trip. This trailer though, it’s important to mention, is like a million dollar transformer trailer and can crawl and do the worm and all sorts of funky tricks. The wheels can turn independently to make the trailer sort of strafe diagonally forward or in a curve, and the whole tray can tilt left or right. like a precarious tray of champagne flutes jiggling on a server’s tray. As they drove forward they had to use these magic tricks to get around a tree. I excitingly and terrifyingly watched as the weird transformer truck did a koala-mum crawl/dance with our house on the back of the trailer, slowly but surely around the tree, up the hill, and on to the busy streets of Brisbane, headed for the Sunshine Coast via the Gateway Bridge and motorway. I booked it home to get some sleep and while we woke up early to go see it, it appears we weren’t early enough as we arrived to see the truck reverse parked on our lot, the drivers seemingly take a well-earned rest, and our house safely delivered to its new home. Despite a hefty street tree deciding it wanted to joust our gutter and hitch a ride on our house like a drunken cowboy, the house arrived intact and looking good.

Safe and sound

Instagram highlights

See highlights on our Instagram: @pelham.house

Youtube

Longer videos on our Youtube channel

The second half

Part two was the wider half and the more housey looking half so we really wanted to get a good look at it while it was driving down the road. We timed it better this half and coming from the other direction to meet it, we came across the police escort just 5 minutes down the road from our block. It is truly bizarre at 3am to be watching half of your house zip by on a windy hinterland road doing 40km/h. Blinded by the flashing blue and red police lights, we followed it to our address as it took a different road for the final stretch, presumably to avoid the tree they hit on the first night. We watched as the transformer truck twisted and pivoted around corners and under branches. As it shifted side to side in the street to avoid parked cars and low branches, we marvelled as the truck operators expertly pitched the right side of the house up by a few degrees so that they didn’t wipe out a string of letterboxes. After one more sketchy corner, they pulled up and backed into our lot with the second half, pushed up as far as they could to one side to leave room for our precious side project, the granny flat, to be transported wall by wall to the back part of the lot.