The house of a retired banker in Gurunanak Nagar is drawing the attention of passers-by and has been causing minor traffic jams on the road since the past couple of days.
The G+1 building owned by Konduru Nageswara Rao is located at the end of New Postal Colony road and adjacent to the main road of Gurunanak Nagar. It is now literally detached intact from the ground and is just resting on a bunch of building jacks.
The building is undergoing the process of lifting, one of the latest civil engineering techniques used to raise the level of a house. Recent re-carpeting of roads had caused Mr. Rao’s house to lie low which is not considered auspicious.
To avoid bad situations
“Not just because of level of road, we are also concerned about drainage and rain water flooding our home during rainy season since years. To avoid such a situation we have decided to lift the house,” Mr. Rao, who retired as Regional Manager, Andhra Bank, told The Hindu .
According to him, the house with ground floor was built in 1976 when there was barely any population in the locality. In 1982, the first floor was built, he added.
“After coming across this solution, I visited houses which were lifted the same way in Guntur, talked to the owners and went ahead only after gaining confidence.”
“The building has been lifted almost four feet high from its actual level. As many as 33 specially trained workers worked to lift the house using 250 building jacks,” explained G. Babu, in-charge, JJ Building Lifting Services, a Chennai-based company.
“We served in Guntur earlier and this is our first service in city. The entire process takes 45 days,” he added. While the occupants of the house evacuated the building, workers of the company are staying in the first floor. However, Mr. Rao’s is not the first house to undergo such a process in the city.
He said in cities like Chennai at least 10 houses are lifted per month and this is picking up in other cities too. It costs Rs.250 per sq.ft. on all floors of the building.
