Who is Danco House Raising & Moving?

The second company we are featuring for this month’s theme, “Suppliers in the new home industry,” is Danco House Raising & Moving. Danco is actually more of a service than a supplier, but with some of the incredible work Danco has done, we just had to include them in April’s special features!

Since 1986, Danco has been raising and moving houses for a number of purposes, the maintenance of heritage homes and the recycling of homes being the most common reasons. According to Danco’s website, a demolished house can add an extra 42 tons (84,000 pounds) of waste to a landfill –something that is avoided if a house is moved and recycled.

A Quick Chat with Dan Myette

Dan Myette is the owner of Danco. He and his team have been involved in some very high profile projects in and around the Greater Toronto Area. Myette has worked with some prominent companies, such as Metrus Properties and Canada’s largest sewer and watermain contractors, ConDrain. Of course, Myette has also worked with a number of new homebuilders and developers, including Sunfield Homes, Pinnacle International, and Skyline International Developments.

We had a number of questions for Myette because we had absolutely no idea what moving a house entailed. Myette said that they use a series of different tools, such as “hydraulic dollies, self driving dollies, unifying jacking machines, and hydraulic jacks.” The heaviest weight that Danco is capable of lifting with these tools is approximately 1 million pounds - and the largest house that Myette ever lifted and moved was about 970,000 pounds. Check out the infographic we created to see what these weights are equivalent to!

The heavy weights are impressive enough, and Myette went on to say that the furthest that Danco has ever moved a house is about 100 km, and it took him and his team about 6.5 hours to do it. That’s pretty quick when you are handling something as fragile as an uprooted home.

Danco in Action

The first time that we saw Danco in action was when they were moving the Richard West heritage house from the Pinnacle on Adelaide Sales Centre parking lot back onto the site. Construction had reached grade and it was finally safe to put the house back.

We hung out with our friends Tom Yim and Anson Kwok of Pinnacle, watching the Danco team strategically navigate the Richard West House back to the site. Although the house was only moving across the street, there were a number of tricky angles and a few obstacles to get around - the whole process took about four hours.

If it weren’t for a house moving company like Danco, Pinnacle would not have been able to even start construction at the Pinnacle on Adelaide site. There are so many heritage homes in Toronto, and with with the amount of condos going up, sometimes the only way to ensure their safety is to pick them up and move them.

When we finished our conversation with Dan Myette, we asked him what his favourite kind of project is, and he said, “Moving historical brick houses. The bigger, the better. I love a good challenge.”

We would like to thank Dan Myette for chatting with us about Danco House Raising & Moving. To learn more about Danco’s services, visit their website here!