Five Safety Tips for Lifting Tiny Houses With Cranes

If you want to hoist a tiny home onto a trailer so that you can move it, you may need a crane. To ensure your safety and the safety of everyone who helps you, make sure that you are as safe as possible. Take a look at these tips:

1. Find a level site.

Tiny homes don't have a large footprint, and as a result, they work well for sites that don't have a lot of flat, leveled land. However, that type of land is not ideal for using a crane. Before you hire the crane, make sure that you have a stable, flat place to park it while using it.

If you don't, you can use pads and cribbing to support your crane, but you should talk with the hire company about the safest ways to support an unlevel crane.

2. Look for obstacles overhead.

In addition to checking out the ground, you also need to consider overhead obstacles. Branches hanging over your tiny house, power lines and other overhead obstacles can be disastrous. When mapping out the movement of your crane, be sure you estimate where its jib and boom are going to be. Depending on the location of your tiny house, you may even need to cut branches to reach it.

3. Never stand or walk around a load.

One of the most important safety rules of using cranes is not to walk under your load while it is on the crane. Properly secured loads should never fall from a crane, but it's better to be safe than sorry -- a tiny house won't feel that small if it drops on your head.

4. Straighten the sling before using.

When you are lifting a tiny house with a crane, you should not just use the hooks. If you fasten the hooks to the windows or other parts of the tiny home, the pressure may ultimately damage your home. Instead, use a sling.

So that the load is balanced properly on the sling, remove any kinks before you use it. Then, gently slide the sling under the tiny house and connect it to the hooks. If the load appears to be unbalanced when you start to lift it, stop, replace the house on the ground and start again until it's balanced.

5. Remove loose elements from your tiny house.

Before lifting your home with the crane, remove any loose pieces. If you have shutters that are secured to the exterior of the house, AC evaporators, solar panels, rooftop water tanks or anything else that is not an integral part of the house, take it off. If you lift the house with those elements attached, they may fling off and hit someone.