My wife and I have just acquired her greatgrand parents home. It is a 97 year old post and beam foundation house. We are getting bids to level it as it has sunk and sagged over the years and the piers have deteriorated. My question is what can be done in prepration to lessen damage to walls that have sheetrock over plaster. My mother in law about 7 years ago started renovations on the inside of the house! Instead of the foundation first. Anyway we would like to save some of the finished work walls, cabinets, counters etc. Any ideas out there?
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Any possibilty you could attach a photo or two?
ar e you wanting to do this yourself or to have it professionally done?
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We will have the house leveled by a professional but do all all other renovations ourselves. I will attach some photos of both inside and out if I can figure out how to post them.
How do you post pictures, I can't figure it out?
i fixed an older house that i had about 20 years ago, check with a soils engineer for footings required , i supported the house on horizontal timbers every 8 ft, then excavated to good clean soil, installed rebar and made support posts out of 2 inch pipe with a plat plate on top with holes to nail to the sills
i jacked the house up level. only a 1/2 inch per day until i had it where i wanted then set the support posts in place and poured the concrete footings. I then removed the temporary cross beams, installed wall forms and poured a new concrete foundation leaving the posts in the new concrete wall i useded a lot of rebar , 2 foot stubs stickint up out of the footings and tied more to reinfoorce the walls it is still setting level
Control joints above the doors ect. espescially in the worst sagging areas. It's plater and lath so the lath should be O.k. The plaster will probably crack is some places Like doorways, archways corners in ceilings and walls.
YOu will find tons of answers here for every tpic
As far as leveling the house and drywall cracking, it all depends on how it is done. We use a guy who has lifted three houses for us, for us to fix and or replace foundations or install for the first time.
If done correctly, smoothly, evenly, you will have minor cracking evn in an old home. Our biggest was a 150 year old two story farm house tht has had many makeovers. the only place we had real problems was where additions or repairs had been done in a way not structurally sound, or in one area where the house had settled a bunch, then an addtion put on to the unlevel house, and the addition was put on level, so that when the house was lifted and put donw level, the addition was not, but we knew that goin ginto it, btu that is where most of our time an denergy was spent, fixing the additions
Where are you located? I'm looking for someone who can 'gently' level an old house for me in Eastern MA ... Bill
I am working on a house (in Boston) that has been jacked up so we can put a basement under it. We used Admiral Building Movers out of NH. 1-603-497-9563
When you say post and beam, I assume you mean that the house has a typical framed platform for the first floor, and that the foundation below is posts, piers, and girders. If that's the case, then the lifting can be done relatively easily by supporting the floor system on steel beams and then jacking. House movers do it all the time and are well acquainted with trying to avoid cracking the building.
However, unless the house has settled very evenly, you should expect some damage to the sheetrock/plaster, and some changes in the door and window openings. It's typical to find that one corner is down farther than others, due to poor handling of roof water or other factors, and that corner is the one where the damage will occur. A carpenter and a sheetrock finisher can repair the damage quickly and easily. It's part of any house moving project. The movers will likely come in, set up, jack the building, then leave. They will not hang around and lift the building 1/8" per day, or anything like that, and even if they did it's debatable whether that would mitigate damage.
Not long ago I looked at a log-frame/pole-frame building, where the log posts that formed the main structure of the walls were also the posts that sat on the piers. The bottoms of those posts were rot-damaged and the building had settled unevenly. I'm hoping that's not the kind of building you're talking about, but from the age I would guess not.
Anyway, fret not--you'll be one happy guy once you have that place sitting on brand new concrete.
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Thank you guys for all of your reponses. The house will remain in the same location with the existing piers repaired and additional ones set with beams to support the sagging floors. The floor joist are real 2x10 on 24" centers. Here are some pictures as it sits.
Which pic is the fornt of the house?Matt
Uh, I don't think I put one in, so here hope this helps. Duh.
OK - I don't think you showed that front elevation pic before... I think I looked at the pic of the back of the house (I was looking for an entry door) and thought it was the front... didn't think much of it. Now that I've seen the front, I'd say it is a cool old house. The 1/2 octagon front room, and hip roof, and what I think are front porch brackets are in the Victorian, Queen Anne theme. Are those some type of brackets I see below the front gable lower corners where just below the water table? I'd be interested to know if there are any outer brackets on the house (say in the front gable) and what the shape of the attic vent is in the front gable. What is the siding material? I'd say it is definately worth restoring but could be a costly project.
Sorry I don't know squat about house leveling... Matt
Yes they were brackets they have broken or completely blew away. I found several pieces of the various brackets that were on the porch, gables and what looks to be on the inside corners of the valleys. Since I have these pieces and pictures we are going to try and build new ones. The original siding was cedar and is covered with the ever popular asbestos shingle siding! We plan to wrap the house with felt or a wind barrier then install some type of fibre cement siding. The attic vents you see are octagon shaped but I believe these were installed about 12 years ago with roof. There are 3 half circle lights in the attic at each gable that had stained glass at one time.
I assume when they jack it they will give you plenty of room to work underneath. I asked for 6' clear underneath when I did mine... make the whole thing a stand-up job.
I think "post & beam" should be changed to "balloon framed on brick piers"! IMHO
And from the open "crawlspace" I would guess this house sits in warmer climate than Illinois......could you add to your profile where you live?
Lot's of work to be done. The leveling action will cause damage to the plaster which you may have to replace or repair. The pier footings will have to be enhanced to prevent further movement. If you enclose the open crawlspace be carefull about trapping water and moisture under the floor system. I am assumming this is in a southern state, the land is fairly flat (flood plain?) and your annual rainfall is more than 40"/year......which means a warm humid environment and potential water related issues.
The house looks mighty rough....if you can manage ( $ &time & effort) to refurbish this rural victorian bungalow you will have a gem!
Go for it!
................Iron Helix
Gee...I wish I could have done that to mine but every house mover laughed at me and told be to just sure it up the way it is (circa:1680) which is what I did...that is an alternative.
I power washer all the rubble rock foundation dirt from the stones... from outside and poured another foundation against the existing one hopefully tieing them together.
This summer I'll need to put new beams under most floors to keep them together so I will dig a bunch of footings...add new posts against the other side (inside) of the rubble rock and add new floor joist along side the old ones tied into the sill plates/timbers
Good luck
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Anything installed level or plumb after the sagging will no longer be so if you start jacking.
Often difficult to decide exactly how level or how plumb you want things to be. Get one door frame true, and another binds. That sort of thing.
In terms of plaster damage, going slow helps.
Never-NEVER do finishe work with questionable foundation and structural issues unresolved. The day will come- one way or the other when you will pay the piper and to get the best work that will outlast the DIY grade work- sequence the project beinninig with full and complete consideration to structure. Good luck!
I'm in new construction but I would guess the order would be:
1) structure
2) utilities: (pumbing, HVAC, Elect)
3) exterior
3) interior
Yes? No? Matt
Some of the plumbing and possibly electrical work comes immediately. You need to remove anything in the way of the steel, which in my case was all of the drains, and you need to disconnect the building entirely from any underground pipe or wire so that it can be lifted.
good points...
Matt
To minimize plaster damage, there are two things to do.
First, rake out any existing cracks that will have to be patched to about 1" wide or so. That removes any stress that the two sides are placing on each other.
Second, pull all the base boards and rake out the plaster to at least 1/2" above the tops of the sole plates. That prevents transfer of stress from the floors to the plaster.
Other than that, expect to have a bunch of plaster work to do after the lift. A while back there was a great plastering site, http://www.ornamentalplaster.com. They had a lot of good info on regular flat work and patching, not just decorative stuff. (I haven't looked at them recently.)
-- J.S.