Christa DiBiase: Well, This is my home that you are looking at across the street there, and it was severely damaged in the flooding that was had here on September 21, 2009.  The hardest part has been all of the paper work that we have to do to get our building permits, all the planning we had to do with the various engineers, the architect and the city that we live in to be able to elevate our home and to meet the requirements of our city and today is a huge day for us, me and my family, because we are elevating our home.  We are having it elevated 10 feet today, then we are going to have an 8 foot foundation built underneath it and we are putting the home back on the foundation and today is moving day. Today is the day that it is actually lifting and I'm very excited.
It���s really starting to move

Justin Smith: What we'll do is lift this house up ten feet, put a new concrete foundation on it, build a new wood floor on top the concrete foundation and then lower the house structure back on the new wood floor and new foundation.
We put 7 hydraulic ramps underneath the front side of the house.  They run off of air- its an air over hydraulic system.  We pick the house up one inch at a time, in four inch increments from front to back.  Once we pick the house up 4 inches, we move to the back side of the house and pick it up four inches as well, and that's how we walk the house all the way to the top to get our elevation to the height that we are going to.

Walter Rekuc: Its looking pretty good.  I'm very impressed.  It���s an unusual type of elevation of a house in that it was on a slab, so different techniques have to be used to elevate this house.

Christa DiBiase: I think elevating the home is definitely the right choice for us.  Our home flooded and it was about a two and a half foot waterline.  We're actually putting the home up on an eight foot foundation now, and so there will be eight feet protecting our home from any potential water and since that was the most devastating flood we have ever seen around here, we feel pretty secure that we're not going to have to worry, that we'll rest well at night knowing that we're not going to lose all of our possessions in a flood again.

Walter Rekuc:  FEMA has very good guidance on elevating structures and flood proofing.

Christa DiBiase: FEMA's been great and the FEMA field rep was very kind, and through FEMA, I found out about the SBA loan.  It wouldn't have happened without them.  Its been an amazing experience, so fascinating to watch, and its great to see the house up in the air and now they are starting to put the foundation in and soon they'll lower the house back down on the foundation and we'll rebuild and move back in.