Leveling a cabin on post foundation
Hi gents
Mrs. Nautilus and I just bought some recreational property for lot value, but it has a nasty 40yr. old (?) cabin on it that we intend to flatten in a few years….waiting for the market to recover and our existing home to be worth more than $5.
Although we didn’t originally intend to use the 700 sq.ft. cabin…yuk…maybe we can fix it up a bit and rent it out for a couple years?
It is built on a grid of wooden posts and concrete blocks, standing on native soil which is rocky/dry. Naturally it sags all over the place, but not so bad you can’t walk a straight line. I can see the droops in the outside corners, however, and one exterior wall is hogged. I plan to gut it to the framing, rewire/plumbing, insulate and drywall the interior.
First step is to level the floors – I plan to rent a couple dozen screw jacks and start torquing them up one by one. Will this work? Or is there a better way?
What tips and suggestions do you have? Safety concerns to consider? Any great advice? Please share!
Replies
Lift the floor to level and you may not be able to close some doors. The assumption is that it was built level in the first place but I've found those assumptions may not be true, or from years of adjustments/repairs, no longer true.
As you lift the floor towards level, do it in small increments and check your door swings to ensure they aren't binding.
If it's only as a rental, the unlevel floors may add character? I'd try renting it & see how my luck was doing before doing all the work on something you intend to bulldoze in the future.
Thanks, but the cabin is uninhabitable as it is. A little too much for character, if you know what I mean. More like Haz-mat. Doors will all come out first anyway.
If the joists are just low and you can raise them ,then fine. If the joists are sagged in their length ,forget raising them. Replace or sister new joists .The old joists may have been undersized, they have a permanent set.
mike