Cisco-Eagle Deploys Innovative House & Building Relocation Conveyor System
System can move homes up to 10,000 square feet
HouseVeyor Specifications
April 1, 2008 – Dallas, Texas - Cisco-Eagle has announced the
availability of its innovative new house moving conveyor system today,
said President Steve Strifler. The system is designed to revolutionize
and replace the current method of relocating homes with specialized trucks
and work crews.
The system, called "HouseVeyor" has been
released after extensive testing in Texas.
"Everyone knows that moving
boxes through a distribution center is much more efficient with conveyor
than it is with lift trucks or carts,” Strifler said. "And the same
applies to moving houses from one place to another. Conveyor can do it
better in the warehouse and on the street.”
Homeowners typically move houses when they are historic
in nature, have special architectural attributes, fall under new zoning
regulations, or simply love the home they have and want to move it.
The average home weighs between dozens to several
hundreds of tons, so moving the structure of a house is a huge
undertaking. Structural specialists make sure the house is safe to move.
Home moving companies utilize jacks, timbers and other equipment to lift
and support the house on its journey. That is the issue the conveyorized
house moving system addresses, Strifler said. "We have full roller
support beneath a house for the entire journey.”
That is important because traditional home-transport
methods place a lot of strain on the floor joists and frame of the
house. The potential of structural damage make moving homes riskier, and
more costly. Often houses moved this way must be extensively repaired
when they are placed on their new foundations at new locations.
"The house is actually more supported on a full width
conveyor roller system as it moves than it was sitting on its previous
foundation,” Cisco-Eagle Vice President of Systems & Design Mike
Palmison added. "We moved my house as a test, sent it around the block,
and brought it back, and there were no issues. In fact, it came back
structurally better than before. The entire deal took about three
hours.”
Also, the requirements for moving a home are less
stringent with conveyorized solutions. Windows do not have to be
removed, and most household items can stay in place, rather than being
packed up. "That makes the move much less stressful to the homeowner,”
Palmison added. "I left a cat in there and he was fine for the trip. I'm
not sure he even woke up.”
That time savings is another big factor. The
Cisco-Eagle home moving system utilizes precision dynamite charges
placed around the home’s foundation to dislodge it. High-energy lasers
are also used in some cases to troubleshoot the foundation connections.
Once freed from its foundation, the house is nudged onto roller
conveyors as wide as 200 feet. "That part is all gravity,” Strifler
added. "The conveyor is so easy-rolling that once a house is freed, a
few workers can manually push it onto the rollers and it moves to the
motorized belt system.”
Since the process puts no structural stress on the
homes, larger houses can be moved easier than ever. Traditional methods
work best on one-story homes, but the Cisco-Eagle system removes
structural stress to the degree that homes up to five stories, and even
smaller office buildings could be accommodated. Weight limitations are
far beyond the typical weight of American homes up to 10,000 square
feet. Also, the system could accommodate more than one house at a time,
making it easy to relocate an entire block of homes at once.
The system is not limited by geographic reach.
"Obviously you have to install conveyor atop city streets,” Strifler
said, "and you don’t have to do that with home moving truck systems. But
we have moved test houses as many as 500 miles without difficulty.” The
conveyors can be constructed lower profile than most trucks, helping to
alleviate issues with power lines and trees that can plague typical home
moves. The system is designed for modularity, so a home can be
"leapfrogged” by disassembling conveyor used behind it and then
reassembled in front of it.
With conventional systems, the nature of the street
route—whether it is long and straight or curvy and bumpy, or wide enough
to accommodate a home—has dictated many of the costs and the viability
of home moves. While the Cisco-Eagle system uses public streets more
often than not, it is capable of moving homes across undeveloped fields,
and with specialized structural supports, even across bodies of water
like rivers and small lakes.
"We did one where we moved it right across the TCU
campus in Dallas,” Strifler said. "We inclined it above a classroom
building, declined it back down, and then curved it around the football
stadium, and it worked fine. That took miles off the trip."
"Really, the local city officials haven’t been upset
with us, so far,” said Cisco-Eagle Marketing Director Chris Doyle. "They
have seen a house move in a few hours, and then our crews remove the
conveyors and it’s all done often with less hassle than using moving
trucks to the local community."
For more information on the Cisco-Eagle HouseVeyor
Building Relocation
system, please see our specifications page.
