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I am renovating an old two-story farmhouse in central PA. One of the main walls is supported by concrete piers. After removing the porch I noticed that a pier was missing (apparently fell over due to shallow footing) and to make matters worse, the timber sills were butted at that point. The house has sagged a couple inches in this area.
I have set up some temporary posts and I would like to jack the house up to level. However, the ground is getting frozen, and digging/pouting footers is problematic at this time of year. I am wondering if supporting the wall on heavy timbers until spring would be ok so I can continue to work on other things? Or would the ground freezing/thawing cause problems over the next couple months? Are there tricks to minimize heaving?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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To minimize heaving insulate the ground. hay bales, foam, whatever.
to remain adjustable, use adjustable jack posts, hydraulic jacks, or old screw type house jacks.
*Ditto piffin' comments. A screw type house jack on some cribbing should work but you need to keep a careful eye on it for frost heaves and water washing out the earth under the cribbing come spring. I would not do any finish work (drywall/plaster etc) till the new pier is in place and everything is level.
*Don't rely on any hydraulic jack for any long period of time, as the seals will eventually leak enough to allow the jack to go down. Great seals will make this amount small, but it will likely happen.Be sure to use the jack to get you up on to some solid wood shoring, and then take the pressure off the jack.This is true for overnight or until next spring.They do make hydraulic valves that are designed to avoid this condition, but I would not bet that any jack picked at random would neccessarily have one inside it, or that it would work perfectly.How's this:Trust wood, not oil.
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I am renovating an old two-story farmhouse in central PA. One of the main walls is supported by concrete piers. After removing the porch I noticed that a pier was missing (apparently fell over due to shallow footing) and to make matters worse, the timber sills were butted at that point. The house has sagged a couple inches in this area.
I have set up some temporary posts and I would like to jack the house up to level. However, the ground is getting frozen, and digging/pouting footers is problematic at this time of year. I am wondering if supporting the wall on heavy timbers until spring would be ok so I can continue to work on other things? Or would the ground freezing/thawing cause problems over the next couple months? Are there tricks to minimize heaving?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!