Take It To The Board with Donna DiMaggio Berger
Take It To The Board with Donna DiMaggio Berger
To Rise Above--How Home Elevation Is Changing Flood Protection
Flooding is a harsh reality for communities across Florida and the U.S. Rising tides, storm surges, and unpredictable weather have left many searching for solutions beyond sandbags and hope. But what if you could physically lift your home—or even an entire building—out of harm’s way?
In this episode of Take It To the Board, host Donna DiMaggio Berger sits down with Wayne Fairley, founder and managing director of Planet 3 (P3) Elevation, to explore the groundbreaking work of structural elevation. This innovative flood protection method quite literally raises homes and buildings above flood levels, providing a long-term safeguard against water damage.
The process may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but it’s real—and remarkably effective. Skilled teams tunnel beneath structures, creating a network of passages to access the structural supports. Using hydraulic jacks and strategically placed concrete blocks, they gradually lift entire structures, slab and all, to safer elevations.
What’s even more surprising? The disruption to homeowners is minimal. Most families only need to leave for about a week during the lifting phase, with no need to move furniture. When they return, their home is exactly as they left it—just several feet higher. For residents of flood-prone areas like Houston’s Meyerland, where some have endured multiple remodels after repeat flooding, this solution has been life-changing.
Beyond flood protection, elevation restores property values, slashes insurance premiums, and delivers priceless peace of mind. For many, lifting their home isn’t just a precaution—it’s a necessity. While the cost—typically $200,000–$280,000 for a 2,500-square-foot home—is significant, it often proves more economical than repeated flood repairs. Plus, FEMA grants may help offset expenses.
As climate change drives more frequent and severe flooding across the United States, structural elevation offers a possible solution that works with nature rather than against it. Whether you're dealing with coastal storm surges, river overflows, or drainage issues from nearby development, lifting your home might be the most reliable way to rise above the water—literally.
Conversation Highlights Include:
- The ins and outs of the elevation process
- Grants available to homeowners who want to elevate their homes
- Height or weight limitations on the structures
- Minimum and maximum elevation heights
- Elevation for multifamily buildings
- The Slab Variable
- Potential downsides to elevating a structure
- What’s next for P3?
Related Links:
Hi everyone, I'm attorney Donna DiMaggio-Berger, and this is Take it to the Board where we speak. Condo and HOA Homeowners throughout the United States know all too well the devastation that flooding can bring. Rising tides, storm surges and unpredictable weather patterns have left many communities searching for solutions beyond sandbags and wishful thinking. But what if you could quite literally lift your home or even an entire structure out of harm's way? Today on Take it to the Board, we're diving into the innovative world of structural elevation with Wayne Fairley, who is the managing director and one of the founders of Planet 3, or P3 Elevation. His company is transforming flood mitigation by raising homes and buildings to protect them from costly and catastrophic water damage.
Speaker 1:It's not just about lifting structures. It's about elevating resilience, property values and peace of mind. I didn't even know this kind of elevation service was possible until I read a recent article in the New York Times in which P3 was mentioned. It really piqued my interest to find out how the process works, what are the benefits and challenges, and is this the future of flood protection for coastal and other flood-prone communities? Well, today we're going to find out. Wayne, welcome to Take it to the Board.
Speaker 2:Thank you, donna, it's really good to be here. Thanks for the invitation.
Speaker 1:Well, we're in our fourth season, Wayne, and we've never done an episode on this type of service. As I said in the introduction, I didn't even know this was possible, Although when you think about it, it should be. So let me ask you what inspired you to get into this business.
Speaker 2:Well, like you, I knew nothing about this. And 10-ish years ago a couple of guys came to me, one of whom is my brother. I knew my brother was working in this industry. I obviously know him well, but I didn't really understand it. He and the other guy the three of us being founders of P3, they said to me we're the best in the world at what we do, but the environment in which we do it is very complex and we don't want to have anything to do with that environment, we just want to do the work. Would you start a company and let us work for you, and we will have a home, so to speak, to do this. We're tired of being kind of nomads in the industry, working for a lot of other people.
Speaker 1:At that point their business was elevation, was elevating structures. And what did they start? How small did they start out?
Speaker 2:Well, one of my associates, one of the co-founders, chad. He comes from a family in Michigan that is. They call them shack draggers. They move houses. Of course those are small or those are frame houses that are not concrete slab houses like we have here along the Southern US right. So he had been in the home moving business and house lifting business literally all of his life. I think third generation in the business. But he and his father had teamed with FEMA and LSU about going on 30 years ago now to prove that slab homes could be elevated. So they did. A pilot in Denham Springs, louisiana, almost 25 years ago proved that slabs could be lifted and since then Chad trained most of the people in the country that know how to lift a slab home.
Speaker 1:You've been around long enough now to know that this works, right this?
Speaker 2:technology works. Undoubtedly it works. We've, as P3, since the three of us founded this, we've done many hundreds of homes, 90% of which are heavy slab structures.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to talk to you about this because, again, like I said in the introduction, I saw video. I saw that you dig trenches and you lift it and unfortunately we're not capturing video on this, but we can put a link to you. They really need to see how this works. But can you walk us through the elevation process? Let's take a 2,500-square-foot home. Okay, let's say it's already flooded once they come to P3. They say, wayne, we don't want this to happen again. Can you walk us through the process beginning to end?
Speaker 2:Yes. So there are a couple of options on how you go about this. But I'm going to speak about a 2,500 square foot home that has been remodeled, mitigated and remodeled right so it is a finished product been remodeled, mitigated and remodeled right so it is a finished product. So, since it's been remodeled recently because of a flood, it's a nice place. They've really done these latest designs, everything. It's a nice place.
Speaker 2:So we want to take great care with that. So in one sense, I say we move wedding cakes right. You don't want to break a wedding cake the last thing you want to do. So a wedding cake is always built on a sheet, on a platform of some sort, right? You don't want to break a wedding cake the last thing you want to do. So a wedding cake is always built on a sheet, on a platform of some sort, right? So what we do is lift the wedding cake. We don't try to lift the wedding cake individually in pieces. We lift whatever the wedding cake is sitting on and we lift that up and support it at whatever level is appropriate for that home. And I can speak about how high do we lift. That's always a discussion and there are several parameters for that. But we would tunnel under the home and literally dig under that 2,500 square feet home, about 100 to 150 linear feet of tunnels.
Speaker 1:And I know I apologize in advance. I'm going to stop you a lot because you're talking to somebody who doesn't know anything about first of all, what kind of machinery do you use to tunnel and how far down do you know to tunnel?
Speaker 2:Well, the answer may be surprising, in that we use no machinery whatsoever for the tunneling. We have teams of men whose job is to tunnel and they love to tunnel, and the artistry of their tunnels show their pride in doing their job, doing their work, and so they literally do it all by hand.
Speaker 1:Okay, I have to let that sink in, and so they literally do it all by hand. Okay, I have to let that sink in. So for a 2,500 square foot home, what size team would you need? Because tunneling is the start. First you have to get-.
Speaker 2:Tunneling is the start.
Speaker 1:Yes, Okay, so how many people would you we go?
Speaker 2:to the house, we make sure everything is out of the way, so to speak. We start tunneling. So there would typically be a team of 10 excavators, 10 guys, for about 7 to 10 working days and the main thing they're doing is tunneling. So a home most slab homes, if they're built properly. You know, the top of the floor is flat of the slab right, but on the bottom it's got ridges. I say that the top of the slab is a pancake, the bottom of the slab is a waffle.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, so what we actually lift is the waffle. We find the thick parts of the slab, they're called grade beams, and so in the tunneling process we identify these grade beams, because we actually lift the platform using the ridges and the waffle right. And so we do that tunneling and then, after we've identified all of those, we start building the foundation. And the foundation is built out of concrete blocks that are about the size of my large laptop screen here large laptop screen here square and solid, and they have a hole in them. So we literally put those in the tunnels under the waffle section. Tell me if I'm getting too much detail here.
Speaker 1:No, keep going.
Speaker 2:One hydraulic jack that goes out to a machine that's pressurized, pressurizing the hose and pressurizing the jack, and there's two people doing it and they're using verbal signals to each other and the guy in the trench is literally lining the block up and pushing that block into the dirt. And then we'll reset the jack up to 50 times to push additional blocks on top of that one deep into the earth, and between each block there's a steel pin that locks those two blocks together and the secret sauce is that we push that block until the pressure against the block is so great that, instead of the block going down, the house starts to move up. So a key part of the quality control is to make sure you have someone there that recognizes when that moment of refusal it's called, when that moment of refusal occurs, so that you don't break the blocks or you don't break the house.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's a lot. So, 500 square foot home. Let's say, 10 days to dig the tunnels. At what point? Typically and I know everything's different and I want to talk to you about the different type of slabs that you might encounter in the different procedures but let's say it's a slab in good condition, at what point do you hit that refusal? After the tunnels and everything's in place?
Speaker 2:It depends on the soil. So the block, the pile, is installed to a certain pressure and it depends on the nature of the soil into which the block is being pushed. And in Florida, where you have sand, it's difficult to use this method. We don't use this method in coastal and beach environments because you can't push that block into sand.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you so what method do you use for homes built on the sand?
Speaker 2:Instead, we do the same tunneling, but we tunnel in order to insert beams under the home. So we lift the beam. We don't lift on the pile. We lift on a beam by pushing up on steel beams. The pile, we lift on a beam by pushing up on steel beams.
Speaker 1:Does the age of the structure matter, wayne, in terms of whether or not the underlying slab has deteriorated, especially because concrete and again I'm not a contractor, I'm not an engineer, but I'm an attorney who deals with a lot of condos and homeowners associations it's my understanding that concrete has gotten more porous in nature and it gets more porous over time. So can you talk about the age and condition of the slab?
Speaker 2:I am not either a concrete expert. I know that concrete's strength, the chemical reaction that creates concrete from the water evaporation. You know it gets stronger quickly. In seven days it gets to most of its strength and then I understand it keeps strengthening for up to 10 years and then after that there's a slow decline in the quality of the concrete right, but it can last for hundreds of years.
Speaker 1:So what I'm hearing is there any structure that's too old for this method? Like, have you done any historic homes or buildings?
Speaker 2:Yes. So most of the homes that we elevate, I would say, were built in the 60s or 50s, many in the 70s and up since, but concrete didn't come into use as widely as it is until about the 50s, right? So if you think of the mid-century moderns the ones that you might see Cary Grant or somebody having a party in that's when concrete came to be widely used in home construction as a slab home, everything before that was pretty much categorically called pier and beam, right. So we left a lot of 50s, 60s and 70s homes of very large footprint size. Right, those tend to be the houses with the bigger footprints. We left homes that are less than a year old that are very large, also because somebody messed up and didn't didn't get it built correctly, right or at the correct height for uh, I can. I can tell you why. We would do a brand new house, but, but we do that too as a practical matter.
Speaker 1:The age doesn't matter, it's the condition it does okay, but pyramid beam is wood right, so if you were talking about a house built in the 20s, the 1920, or the 1880s could you elevate that kind of structure, Wayne?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, and my reference point for that is the city of Galveston. At that time, 1900, there was a hurricane that hit Galveston. Nobody knew it was coming right. It wasn't around then and Galveston was bigger than Houston. After that flood, the entire city of Galveston was elevated. Every house there was pier and beam and they elevated almost every house there by about five feet. Pier and beam homes are much easier to do than slab houses.
Speaker 1:Wow, You've led me into my next question. Is there a minimum? Somebody calls you out, Do you say we have to raise it at least this much and we can only raise the structure this high. Is there a minimum and a maximum for elevation?
Speaker 2:because it's difficult to work under a house that's only been lifted a few inches or one foot. It's difficult to do the follow-up things that we need to do, like rebuild or restore the plumbing underneath the home. It's easier if you've got a crawl space of two or three feet. So the sweet spot for our business is about five feet. We elevate many, many, many homes in the four to five and a half foot range because that's a very economical point and it solves for 80% of our customers. It solves their issue we can lift the highest that we've ever lifted is 18 feet.
Speaker 2:But there is no practical limitation. We've lifted many, many homes 10 feet also, and the thinking being that if you lift a home five feet, you can't use the space underneath for anything except maybe storing a kayak. You can't walk around under it practically. If you lift a home 10 feet, you've got an area the size of the entire house underneath that's usable for parking or storage, any number of things. So seven feet is kind of a no man's land. It's not high enough to be functional, but yet it's pretty high right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I imagine you also have to contend with local zoning ordinances. So I wanted to ask you are local ordinances catching up with this technology and the growing demand for elevation, because we continue to flood? And I want to talk to you and ask you how many homes you've seen your customers who have come to you who have flooded multiple times before they made the decision to elevate. So two-part question. One are local ordinances catching up because of the recurrence of flooding in many areas, and are you seeing a lot of customers who were flooded more than once and that's why they came to you?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'll take the second one Right. So here in Houston we have an area called Meyerland that was built out in the 60s A very nice. It's close to the Texas Medical Center. There are a lot of well-to-do families that live there and about half the population is Jewish. The synagogues are there. Everybody that lives there wants to stay there, but yet they flooded in 2015 and 2016 and 2017. Imagine remodeling your house three times in three years.
Speaker 1:No, Wayne, I cannot imagine it.
Speaker 2:No, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but after the second and third floods they called us and we lifted a lot of houses. In that you have the intersection there of people with means and repetitive flooding in nice homes and a desire to stay there. That is an outlier community where you have all those factors in one place. But yes, many people call us after one flood, definitely after two or three.
Speaker 1:And what about the local ordinances? Because you said that the highest elevation you've ever attained was, I think, 18 feet.
Speaker 2:Yes, I imagine that was that okay, or did you have to get a variance?
Speaker 1:under the local code.
Speaker 2:So, if you can imagine, we lift homes in various kinds of communities. Think of a subdivision right, we have these sprawling subdivisions and then in other places you have a river, a valley setting that is more casual right, and so that along those settings in fact I'm picturing the Guadalupe River here in Texas where once a decade a wall of water comes down that valley as a torrent right, and so those homes need to be lifted quite high and that's where the super high lifts happen. The 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 foot elevations happen Not in a subdivision, where your neighbor is way down there and you're like a water tower.
Speaker 1:You know this podcast is called. Take it to the Board.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Right. So we deal with a lot of board issues. So I'm imagining, because you said not everything's homogenous, you mentioned a relatively homogenous community, but I'm thinking of one of my large HOAs and maybe you have one individual, one home, one family that has said we've had enough, we're going to, we're going to elevate this house and we'll get it cost but I imagine they're significant to lift a twenty five hundred or thirty five hundred square foot home. But their neighbors don't feel the same way. They may have suffered through flooding, they may not have the same means. So now you've got one home where they were equal and maybe it changes the neighbor's view, it may be cast a shadow. So those are the kind of issues I'm thinking about that you could encounter, and have you encountered that?
Speaker 2:Yes, we have. So there are a lot of issues wrapped up into that right. So I would say that typically we don't create outliers in a community. We lift homes in a community and the others might not be lifted, but they all want to be and they all. If you go back to Meyerland, we lifted a lot of houses there. Today, 10 years after those floods, 80% of the homes there have either been torn down and rebuilt at a higher level, or they've been elevated or they're vacant lots, because after three floods no one's going to just keep remodeling their house right, or they're not worth it. They've been abandoned. There's a few of those scattered in that very nice neighborhood. So I would say that elevation is kind of the first mover of those are the first movers in our community. Everybody else is going to follow by eventually elevating their house or needing to build or rebuild an elevated house.
Speaker 1:That was my suspicion as well, that it's like the first domino right and then the rest fall because you see, your neighbor is not suffering the same amount of damage. I live in homeowners association in Western Broward County. We are slightly elevated, but in South Florida I mean, we're at sea level, so we don't have. We don't have anywhere to go really. But there is one home in my neighborhood and I think there's 98 homes in my neighborhood that is on a hill. I think there's 98 homes in my neighborhood that is on a hill. I don't know how, I don't know.
Speaker 1:These were all custom homes, so I don't know if that individual just had foresight 30 years ago to say I want to you know, have an elevated home, but you know they drive up a hill a slight hill, but it's still a hill for Florida to get to their home.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so there's the appearance in a neighborhood and an elevated home being an outlier in appearance, right. But there's also a misconception that that elevated home is going to cause other homes to flood by displacing water, when in fact that's not true, because every home that we elevate in most flood zones and most jurisdictions require venting of that crawl space that we create, which basically says when there's a flood, we're going to park water under this home so that it does not increase the water level for in other, in other areas, for the next door neighbor or others.
Speaker 1:You read my mind because that I would think would be a neighbor's concern that, oh, my neighbor is elevated five, 10 feet above me. It's going to run off and flood my home, but do you always elevate and build it where there's displacement underneath? Is it ever a solid structure underneath a solid slab?
Speaker 2:underneath. It cannot be by regulation. So you mentioned a neighbor on a hill right so they brought in fill and probably compacted it and built that house on top right. It's unusual to be able to bring fill into a community, at least an urban community or a suburban community. Most are built with the ability to again park water under the house. They're suspended elevations, not built on fill.
Speaker 1:Do you have any feedback from real estate professionals as to whether or not elevated real property these days has an enhanced property value?
Speaker 2:I'll answer that a different way. It restores value. It doesn't necessarily enhance value. So again back to Meyerland. If you go there today and you buy a 2,500 square foot house most of them are larger, but you buy a home there it really doesn't matter if it's an elevated home or a new home that was built elevated, they're all market value homes, whereas the home that's not been lifted there has severely diminished value, right? So we restore the value of the ones we elevate.
Speaker 1:Doing what I do, knowing what I know, because I have all these fabulous guests on the podcast. If I were looking to downsize because I'm in a home that we, you know, raised our family in and too big for us, maybe looking to downsize I would be looking for something elevated. I mean, I love the coast. Right now I'm inland in western Broward County. I don't know if I would be moving to the coast for a variety of reasons, including hurricanes, insurance and everything else, but I think if I were going to buy again, it would be. I'd be looking. Elevation would be a factor today when it wasn't, you know, 30 years ago.
Speaker 2:Absolutely the same with me. I would never build a house on a slab close to the ground. I would at least fill, if I could, a foot, maybe two, but I would never build it. Many of our customers, they don't flood from widespread flooding, they flood from immediate environmental changes. Across the street they built a large complex of some sort. Now the drainage pattern has changed and now their home is getting flooded repeatedly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did an episode, wayne, with my partner, katie Berkey, on construction going up next door and I keep trying to urge listeners if there is construction going up next door, and I keep trying to urge listeners if there is construction going up next door, it's important that you get involved in that process. It's not just about traffic and noise and density. You've hit on one of the other crucial impacts new construction can have on existing construction, and that's drainage and flooding. Yes, it really is huge.
Speaker 2:It's real. Yes, you should be aware.
Speaker 1:Have you had any repeat customers where you raised them a few feet and then they came back and said we need to do it again?
Speaker 2:One customer One and yeah, it's a gentleman in North Houston that we raised this house four feet, and he was. I can get into why we raised it a certain height, right, but he thought four feet would cover every contingency. It covered every historical concern and then, literally within the year, it had flooded a couple of inches in his house and he had already been disrupted three years in a row and we went back and I charged him nothing to do that. I don't like seeing grown men cry, but it was a very emotional day for him and his family.
Speaker 1:Well, that's very nice of you. We haven't even talked about cost yet, so what are the costs?
Speaker 2:We get calls every day about I want to elevate my house. What's the price? And that's an impossible question to answer on the phone, right, but I always tell folks even before I go see them. There are really three costs to elevation, and if someone's giving you numbers, make sure that you're able to compare apples and apples right. And so the costs are the structural cost, basically the lifting it and putting a foundation under it, as I say, that's going to hold it in place for at least 100 years.
Speaker 2:So there's the structural costs. And then you have I call it functional costs. You've disrupted some some plumbing, you disrupted some electrical wires. You've got to have steps now to you know, or at least extend steps to get in the house. These are functional things to make the house functional and practically functional at that level. And then the third category is aesthetic costs, to make it beautiful again and to make it look like it was designed to, was designed in that way. So the first part is probably what you're most interested in. The structural costs we don't quote by the square foot, but there's a correlation of square feet, two square feet over time. And for a home that we're lifting, this is for slab homes, not pier and beam a home that we're lifting. This is for slab homes, not pier and beam, right? No-transcript? Just to give you a ballpark understanding. So that 2,500 square foot house is going to be 200 to 250,000 or 280,000. It more depends on the aesthetics than anything else.
Speaker 1:Sure, and if you live in a homeowners association, you can be assured that the aesthetics are going to count. So you're not just going to leave it like a construction site when you're done.
Speaker 2:That is correct, and even if we're not doing the work, all those aesthetics we commonly do commonly do not, but they're always an issue and I don't want to elevate your house unless there's a plan to make it beautiful. I don't want to leave a Frankenstein right.
Speaker 1:So I imagine there have to be grants available to homeowners who want to do this. It probably varies by geography, but can you talk about some of the available grants?
Speaker 2:Yes, there are three common kinds of grants and they're all ultimately funded by FEMA. And I got to tell you, donna, your head is going to hurt after we talk about this. It's a very complex world, okay.
Speaker 1:I'm somewhat familiar with it, Wayne.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, fema has. You know there are communities where there's been repetitive flooding, so FEMA has a national list of what they call SRL properties severe repetitive loss properties so if you have one or more of those in your community, you can apply to FEMA for categorically it's called a FMA grant Flood Mitigation Assistance right, and what I want to tell you about that is that it's a long process and very few people get it.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's by design, Wayne.
Speaker 2:Maybe. So FEMA, every year they create a pool of money just call it $200 million. Every year they create a pool of money just call it $200 million and all communities can apply for that. I don't know what the win-loss ratio is, but it's a pretty small win percentage that get it and it depends on the score. They call it the benefit-cost ratio, right? So if you tell FEMA you're going to save them a lot of money and it's not going to cost them much, you're probably going to be high at the list of grants. So there are only about 500 houses a year in the country that get that grant. It correlates closely to winning the lottery, literally.
Speaker 1:Have any of your customers gotten the grants?
Speaker 2:Yes, many, many.
Speaker 1:And does FEMA pay you directly or they reimburse the owner?
Speaker 2:Well, it's the state that applies for the money. The state is the applicant, the community is the sub-applicant and the homeowner is the beneficiary. So there are lots of layers of bureaucratic process. So in year one, fema makes the money available and you apply. Year two, you get noticed that your community got this grant, you know $8.6 million or whatever it is. Year three, it's finalized and they advertise for contractors to do this work right. And then year four, it goes back up through the chain and there's specific contracts and bids and proposals and that goes back up to FEMA for approval. And then in year five, some more gets done.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking about who else benefits from being a recipient of these grants. I think the lenders do as well. It's protecting their collateral.
Speaker 2:Yes, and we rarely have involvement of the lender. You know if we don't do it, the lender is going to be involved. You know there's probably might be a default, a higher percentage of defaults, and so on. Doing elevation is less of an issue for the lender. You're protecting the collateral Exactly.
Speaker 1:Do we know? Well, I was going to ask also are there any of your customers who obtain loans to do this elevation work?
Speaker 2:Yes, many of them In fact, immediately after disasters where there's SBA assistance, many of them get an SBA loan to do this work.
Speaker 1:I would imagine that the one thing I haven't asked you so far is whether or not you've ever elevated a multifamily building. Have you ever elevated a multifamily?
Speaker 2:Yes, primarily, I'll categorically call them townhomes, right, these are multifamily in a horizontal sense, not in a vertical sense. They're attached homes.
Speaker 1:There was an article a few months back I think it was a Miami Herald article and it was talking about a number of relatively new high-rise luxury buildings in Miami-Dade that are sinking Not at a catastrophic rate, but they are. They did a subsidence report. Is that something that elevation could address? Yes, it is. Is that something that elevation could address?
Speaker 2:Yes, it is. You know, there'd be a fine line between elevating it and just repairing it, right? But it would involve the same methodology of tunneling and using a unified jacking system to push it back up or push it to level or to elevate it.
Speaker 1:Yes, so, Wayne, is P3 going to gear up for elevating major high rises?
Speaker 2:We are, we can, yes, we do some industrial work. That's similar, right? Let's say there was a building at NASA last year that needed to be elevated by two feet, and we did that. It was quite a large structure. So it doesn't matter how the building is configured, it's a heavy structure, right? It doesn't matter how the building is configured, it's a heavy structure, right? A building of some sort, it doesn't matter that it's residential or not.
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't. I would imagine the technology is the same, which leads me to my next question Is P3 doing any government contracts?
Speaker 2:Well, not directly with the government A lot of our work is funded by the government but indirectly through the state and through various cities and counties.
Speaker 1:Are you collaborating with any similar companies elsewhere in the world? I imagine you share technology. Maybe you go to different industry events in industry events?
Speaker 2:We actually don't. We borrow and lend some equipment at times, but no, we're sort of heads down busy in our own world and, no, we don't get out much.
Speaker 1:But I'm picturing when people hear about you, maybe in Europe or wherever they're experiencing the same thing with rising water, they're reaching out to you to see what you all are doing.
Speaker 2:We do have a plan to expand by partnering with some larger enterprises that understand the vision and understand our capabilities, so we can take this to many other states and other industries. It's very extensible in a couple of directions.
Speaker 1:I don't think flooding is going to suddenly go away. From every guest I've had on this show, it seems like not only is flooding here to stay, but it's going to get worse.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely so. The industry today has been made up of a lot of small specialist characters, right, and I'll say there's characters that there's a founder and there's always these stories about these characters. These are people that you know that live under houses, tunneling and lifting you can almost call them hobbyists and we're trying to turn it into a mainstream industry that can assist counties, states, homeowners, nationwide, with all sorts of structures and some innovative thinking about what might be possible.
Speaker 1:I like your approach to the flooding problem, as opposed to building up levees so high. I have a lot of family members in New Orleans, so one of New Orleans responses to hurricanes and floodings is to build the levees up very high. What can happen, though, is that you can feel like you're literally living in the bottom of a bathtub, looking up over a levee, but by elevating, you don't have that issue.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and you know we have some customers that have looked at every possibility. The pain is so great, right, we have people that looked at every option. They come back to us and say this is really the only guarantee that I'm not going to flood. It's all sorts of contraptions and mechanisms and other approaches, but this is the one, after exhausting it, this is the one they like best.
Speaker 1:So for our listeners, Wayne, who say, well, I think it was a one-off. You know, like lightning's not going to strike me twice, I don't think I'm going to get flooded twice. But if they're in a flood-prone area, what do you say?
Speaker 2:Well, I have had the misfortune of seeing repetitive flooding over now a long period of time, right. So I think anything is possible and a lot of it is probable in due time. I was with a family this morning that engaged with us this morning to lift their house and you know it affects their lives. You know every day if it's raining or if there's a storm coming. I do not sleep. Those are the words I heard this morning.
Speaker 1:I was going to say the mental and emotional toll must be significant.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I first spoke to her seven years ago, and she came back to me this morning and signed up after doing a lot of homework.
Speaker 1:I want to get back to what it's like to actually raise the house. Do the people need to do the occupants need to vacate the home?
Speaker 2:I'm glad you asked. So no material possessions need to leave the home during our process. We tell them if you have a Picasso on the wall, you should probably take it right, or you have something that's irreplaceable or valuable, take it with you. Otherwise you just need your toothbrush and plan to be gone, for it depends on how high the house is going to go. But we get a lot of people back into their homes, living in their homes, in less than one week.
Speaker 1:Less than one week.
Speaker 2:Yes, we start this excavation process. They still live there. There's guys working under the house but they still live there. We have to lift the house. We start disrupting the plumbing and electrical and air conditioning. They need to move out. But we can put all that back together. We can lift it and get those things back in place in less than a week and they can move back in.
Speaker 1:Does anyone think that you're like shooting up the house like a rocket? This is incremental. It's like what like about an inch a day that it's going up.
Speaker 2:No, we lift. In most homes that we lift that are going to go up less than five feet, it's a one day process. We lift them eight inches, about eight inches an hour.
Speaker 1:Eight inches an hour, but it's still not a rocket.
Speaker 2:Safety is paramount in this process, right? So we use a short jack, short jack. So we never have the house suspended in midair without many layers of support by more than eight inches, so it's an eight-inch increment process that recurs about once an hour.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you, Wayne, if there's any downsides to attempting to elevate a structure, and I'm specifically thinking about Florida's six-month hurricane season here. So you know, is that, can you elevate during the six-month season, and what happens if you're in the midst of elevating and a storm comes in?
Speaker 2:I don't have a tremendous amount of you know. There hasn't been enough data over the last 10 years to give you an absolute answer. I could just give you a couple of data points. There was a video published in the New York Times, as you mentioned earlier, of a home 17 feet up sitting on temporary cribbing, and that home took a direct hit from Hurricane Harvey in Seguin, Texas, while it was sitting 17 feet up on cribbing with no concrete under it for 17 feet, and it did not waver.
Speaker 1:It did not, it was fine.
Speaker 2:No, it was fine. Yeah, but I don't want to test that very many times.
Speaker 1:No, you'd prefer not to be doing this in the midst of a hurricane.
Speaker 2:But we do this year round. I mean, we're in Hurricane Alley here in Texas, right, and we've lifted some homes in Florida and I could tell you about that, but we just keep going. We can't predict the storms, we just keep going.
Speaker 1:Have you had confirmation of insurance mitigation credits for homes that have been elevated?
Speaker 2:Yes, that was very predictable. Until the last I'll call it three years Almost every home that we elevated to a height that was comfortably, that was at FEMA's standard base flood elevation or higher their flood insurance premiums always dropped to the minimum. We've not seen that in the last three years. They have come down, but it seems some arbitrary number right. We have a lot of customers that have flood insurance premiums north of $10,000 a year and some north of $20,000 a year. So those come down but not to that minimum, like we used to always see, of about $600, right.
Speaker 1:I don't know. The market always seems to adjust, even to innovation.
Speaker 2:Well, fema has something called a 2.0, right, and so they're taking a. The model has changed and I don't yet understand the model.
Speaker 1:So what's next for P3? I mean, it sounds like you guys are super. Are you super busy, wayne?
Speaker 2:We are super busy. Yes, we have. Yes, we are, and it's good. But we have a lot of capacity also and we have a lot of talent and when you're doing these things, the nuances, all the nuances, matter right. So it's not easy to scale up and to scale down. We carry a large crew of people because they're specialists and they know the nuances of the business. You can't just call in people when business flourishes. So we cultivate a team constantly. So we cultivate a team constantly and it enables us, it enables me, to sleep well, you know, knowing that things are safe and that we're doing things correctly and durably.
Speaker 2:That's reassuring, because every time well, listen, I'm down here in South.
Speaker 1:Florida. But every time we have a significant storm or a hurricane, we do have a lot of, you know, out of state people come in brand new people joining them to help out. You know the level of their experience, the level of their training, their credentials all come into question. So that's reassuring that you have, you know, a longstanding workforce.
Speaker 2:It is and there's really not a substitute for it, and it's very painful to know that there are a lot of less competent operators that are just presenting themselves as somebody they cannot possibly be.
Speaker 1:Well, I was going to ask you that because, as we continue to see these recurring floods and recurring flood damage, are you seeing more people get into your industry, the elevation industry?
Speaker 2:It's been slow growth. There are constraints on talent to do this, so what we have done is taken a process. Everything that we do, we are processizing right so that it can be scalable and repeatable. We're just looking for the right capital partners to help us. You know we need an academy of elevation. Right, it doesn't have to be a big academy, but there needs to be standards and there needs to be quality control of all things. There's tremendous demand from this. We get calls from all over the country constantly. Can you elevate my house in North Carolina, south Carolina, tennessee, you name it California? We've worked in California with city of San Jose, for example.
Speaker 1:So you'll try. I mean, I read on your website 11 states you've done business in.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, most of that experience is my co-founders right. I don't even consider myself an elevation guy. You know I don't tunnel under the house. I handle this environment in which we do that tunneling. It's a very complex environment and they told me that I was going to have the hard job and they were absolutely right the regulatory, environmental and finance and things.
Speaker 1:You know, Wayne, as I'm sitting here talking to you and we take this episode, I live on a golf course and FDOT came in and the golf course to displace water and drainage.
Speaker 1:I'm probably going to need your number on the dial at some point Now that I'm probably going to need your number on the dial at some point now that I'm thinking about the drainage and my golf course and where that water is probably likely to go. We'll see. We'll see, you know. Any final words for our listeners Because I have to tell you, I really hope that we've enlightened some people. Like I said, I didn't know that this was a service that was possible. I should have, but I didn't. I imagine some of our listeners. This is also eye-opening for them. So any final words for our listeners and please let them know where they can find you.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Well, of course they can always find us at p3elevationcom. That's the best place. Since you're concerned about boards, you know here in Texas we have very active homeowners associations and they do care a lot about elevation, primarily that aesthetic component. So the state has gotten involved. You'll have to look up the regulations. But there are certain disarming of homeowners associations where there was a prohibition on elevating their home. You can do more research on that. But we do have some strong HOAs and a lot of times the HOA is the holdup in getting the work done right and it's a fine line between creating another hazard for the family versus upholding the community standard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so to that point it would be. Texas has decided it's in the best interest of the public that, notwithstanding the homeowner architectural restrictions, that people be allowed to safeguard their homes from flood damage. That makes sense.
Speaker 2:That contention is going to persist. Obviously right, and it is very real. There's been HOAs that have held up and then the home floods again and that's a lawsuit. Well, you know, we'll leave that to you.
Speaker 1:I'd probably be trying to defend it, but you're right. I mean, listen, in Florida we haven't. We haven't seen that yet, but one of the things we saw in Florida was is there escaping? We haven't seen that yet, but one of the things we saw in Florida was is there escaping? It was public. The Florida legislature decided that it's in the public. It's good public policy to allow owners to install drought resistant landscaping, even if it's not that pretty. So homeowners association cannot deny it because you know Florida thinks it's a good thing and it's more economic.
Speaker 1:Florida thinks it's a good thing and it's more economic yes. You're right. I think, as climate issues continue to mount, we're going to see legislatures step in and allow their citizens to take whatever steps they need to take. Safeguard, you know, person and property.
Speaker 2:I believe that this is a solution for the masses right, and doing it in mass would bring the cost down significantly and I do think it needs to be considered broadly as a solution.
Speaker 1:Wayne, I really want to thank you for coming on the show today.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for the conversation today. It's been very enjoyable.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to follow and rate us on your favorite podcast platform, or visit takeittotheboardcom for more ways to connect.