I need to level an existing cottage, now resting on cinder block. I need to sink sono tubes under the cottage. How do I get an auger to drill the soon tube holes under the cottage, without lifting the cottage 6 feet? I can lift it a couple of feet, I think, but not much higher.

thanks

Welcome to the forum!

Can you get a large truck (semi) to the cottage area?

I don't know how to drill caissons under the cottage unless you can get a 2 person post hole driller in there and have a bunch of short extensions.

Could you dig caissons around the perimeter of the cottage, say, 75% under the wall and cottage, lift the cottage, pour sement into the caissons slide I-Beams under it and rest them on the caissons to support the whole cottage, then set the cottage back down? That's why I asked about getting the semi to the cottage area - to carry the steel I-Beams.

Could you wash it out? Could you slightly bury the end of the sono tube and agitate the dirt inside with a high pressure/high flow hose as you push down on the tube, burying it as the hole deepens? The mud could be removed with a trash pump and a lot of water.

Of course, you'd want to limit the amount of water under the cabin so that the existing blocks don't sink further, so attention to that aspect would be important.

Just thinking outside of the box...

How big is the cottage? Since you have the capability of raising the cottage how about setting up rollers and moving it enough to each side to expose the area to place the tubes. If you can jack up the bldg it is easy to roll it around a bit.

Maybe look at it from a different perspective.

Could you drill holes for your concrete piers just outside the cabin, raise the cabin slightly, slide timbers or I-beams under the cabin and let the beams permanently rest on the new piers and the cabin permanently rest on the beams?

It would change the appearance of the cabin and you might have to engineer some new "look" to cover the work, but establishing a solid foundation and then transferring the weight onto the new foundation seems safer than jacking the thing up and trying to pour concrete underneath.

This might not work for your situation at all and just disregard if it does not. Just trying to give you ideas you might not have considered. Without knowing the current construction of the cabin hard to tell if it could be done as I describe.

Snrub, with your idea he could take it further and use the beams out far enough to build a deck on them. Lemons into lemonade...