Runum said:
Actually I need help on lifting a shop. My shop is 28x32 wood frame built on a level slab. It was built about 20 years ago and it has rotted sill plates at the bottoms of some of the walls. My plan is to lift the walls up and replace the sill plates. I also want to lay a row of brick or cinder blocks to get the walls up off of the slab. Anyone with any suggetions on how to lift the shop safely? Anyone with experience in this?
Greg
I lifted my barn a couple years ago. The footers had been only dug a foot deep and had cracked and broken. It's an old barn built post & beam style with board & batten. I didn't want the frame to pull apart as I was raising it up so my first job was to screw 2 x 6s to the inside of the frame. I put them on a diagonal, from the bottom corners up to the center of the wall and then put additional pieces in to form a "W" inside the first two corner pieces. You carpenters will recognize that I built a Fink truss. I did this on all three walls, the front is a 18 foot door opening. I braced that and tied the first 3 roof trusses to the wall with 2 x 4s.
I used a variey of jacks, mainly really big bottle jacks and a couple of old mechanical barn jacks. When I got the whole thing up in the air, I bridged across the footer trenches with very large timbers and let the barn down on them. The plates stood off maybe 4 inches above the tops of the blocks.
I then demolished the existed block wall, broke up the footer and began to hand dig a trench around the three walls. I was kind of crouched over but it got better the deeper I went. I went down 4 feet, laid a lattice-work of reo and called the concrete guys. I tend to overdo things and didn't want the next guy to undo my efforts, so ordered 4000 psi concrete. After the pour and a week or so to stiffen up the footers, I started laying block. I brought it up as high under the sills as I could to keep the wood from getting wet. I gained about 3 inches in over all height. In the last course I set J-hooks under the sills and then filled those cores with mortar.
Put down a layer of foam and lowered the barn. Bolted down the sills and coated the outside of the blocks and footer with tar. Back fill with gravel to grade and a couple feet out so I don't have to mow right up to the barn.
It might have been easier to have a fire and then build a new barn, but this one has character and I'm usually too bull-headed to take the easy road.
Seriously though, as other have said, there are companies that do this sort of thing for a living. Try and find one near you. It may cost you a little more, but if anything were to happen, they'd have to foot the bill and not you. Good luck.
They have eaten the lap board the was beneath the siding. I am sure that moisture contributed to the sill plate damage but these little buggers have really eaten the walls. 
Thanks again for your help.