NORTH FORT MYERS, Fla — For weeks, I’ve been showing you how Lochmoor Waterway Estates was hit by recent hurricane storm surge, and now some homeowners are working on a fix - several homes in the neighborhood are being lifted right now.
As Fox 4’s North Fort Myers Community Correspondent, I work in this area daily, so I got a chance to see this process up close and talk to the homeowner about what this means for him.
Watch my report here...
Crews were hammering away, tunneling beneath the house to place hydraulic jacks that will raise the house inch by inch. Homeowner Scott Sorensen’s house was already lifted more than six inches on Tuesday, with a target height of eleven feet. He said it’s lifting his spirits right along with it.
“Today’s a win. I’ve been waiting to go up. I can’t wait until I can actually see some daylight through the other side, you know, literally see some light at the end of those tunnels,” said Sorensen.
Sorensen said he never expected to lift his home to avoid storm surge, despite living so close to the Caloosahatchee. “I’ve been here for 24 years and never had any trouble. Some people have been here way longer than that and say it’s the first time in 100 years. Then, we get two in less than two years, then two back-to-back within a week - it’s hard to wrap your head around,” said Sorensen.
I talked with Chris Ellis, the Operations Supervisor of Davie Shoring, the company doing the home lift. Ellis said once crews jack the home up and rest it on pilings, they fill the tunnels in with a special ‘Perma-lock’ foundation. Once that sets, he said it gives the jacks a base to continue lifting the house to the desired height.
“At that point we can then put in a fully engineered footer around the house and through the house, which encapsulates those pilings, locking in the Perma-lock, so you’ve got a really good base foundation in the ground,” Sorensen explained.
On average, a home lift like Sorensen’s can cost around $1,000 dollars per ten square feet. A 1,000 sq ft home could cost close to $100,000.
While this lifted home hints at the future of Lochmoor Waterway Estates, Sorensen says it won’t mean much without a long-term drainage solution.
“That’s something a homeowner can’t do. We can all lift our houses but if the roads still flooding…” Sorensen said before he paused to shrug. “We don’t flood next door, and the community next to it doesn’t flood either, so I think we need to do something to keep the water off the road.”
