While trying to find a contractor to raise and restump our house I found out some interesting information. A lot of the houses that have been built around Townsville have only been built 5 feet above the ground. This has always confused me because that was too low to actually build in under.

I found out that Townsville had a flood in the 1940s where a lot of the lower subburbs were under 5 feet of water. Because of that a lot of the houses around town were lifted to 5 feet and a lot of new ones were built at that level.

Our new house, which was built around the 1930’s, looks like it was raised to 5 feet after originally being built. Our old house, which was built in the late 1940’s, was built about 6 feet above ground. Our new house is in quite a high area and flooding shouldn’t be a problem. Our old house was at a very low point and was very prone to flooding, which is one more reason why we are happy to move.

(Our old house was at such a low point that the Townsville City Council actually built a huge drain right infront of house with a pumping station attached to it to pump the water out of our suburb and into the flood plains.)

The largest project that we are undertaking with our house renovations is to lift our house. By lifting it we will be effectively doubling our available floor space. We have been talking to 5 different contractors about raising the house and so far the quotes have varied by about 25%! They all seem to offer us the same service, but there is a huge discrepancy in price.

When we have decided which contractor we go with to raise and restump our house we’ll post on here their details so that you have a good place to start.