Hi All,
I bought the old house, (125 yrs old), in Surf City NJ and am looking forward to some improvements this fall. The sloping floor is first to go. Assuming I can level it, my plan is to put a vapor barrier on the dirt of the crawl space, chicken wire between joists to hold up plastic wrapped insulation, plywood subfloor, and some type tounge and groove real wood flooring above. My question is anyone see a flaw in this plan? Thanks
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Replies
Figure that if you will need to go into the crawl space on any kind of a regular basis, that vapour barrier isn't going to stand up well to foot traffic. You might be well advised to dump 3-6" inches of ¾" crushed stone on top of it as a minimum. Long-term dead storage you keep in the crawl space can then be laid on top of packing skids sitting on the gravel.
As to the chicken wire, this is galvanized wire. Make sure you don't let it come in contact with any iron or copper pipes. The resulting galvanic action won't improve the condition of those old pipes one bit.
You might be better off using another method of insulating the floor. I don't like sprayed-on urethane foam for this kind of application, because it covers all the utilities and makes future access difficult. Take a look at paper-faced Fibreglas batts which can be stapled up to the joists. Or rigid polystyrene or polyisocyanure panels.
When you go to level the floor, understand that in a house that old you may be dealing with substantial height differences, sometimes over an inch or even more. You may need to jack up and support sagged portions of the joist system. The process of doing this will likely produce some cracks in the plaster of any partition walls that are dependent on the joists you lift. So you are likely to need the services of a plasterer once your floor is leveled. (For obvious reasons, it would be better to do any replastering necessary before laying the finish flooring.)
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
Hi Dino,
Thanks for the reply. The crawlspace is truly that, a crawlspace. There will be no routine entering of the space once I've laid the floor. This house is practically on grade, over 125 years it has settled alot, the floor pitch is probably 2-3 inches if not more. I like the idea of rigid insulation, probably easier.
Thanks
Kevin
Dino
One more thing, there is no plaster for the walls. This house is a true beach bungalow from yesteryear. Board and batten exterior, beadboard walls and ceiling. I'll post some pictures next week, once I take some current ones.
Kevin
As far as installation is concerned, paper-faced Fibreglas would probably be the easiest. Rigid panels have to be trimmed more precisely to fit well, and for a really tight job need to be taped and/or foamed along the edges. Sometimes in older houses like yours, joist spacing isn't particularly uniform, too. A lot of old-timers just laid things in by eye, so you could have joists or studs set on nominal 24" centers that vary in reality from 23" to 27".This didn't matter as much in an era before the use of sheet goods for subflooring and sheathing.
Of course, if you have nothing (or not much) hanging below the joists, you could simply lay the 2x8 panels of foam board underneath and perpendicular to the joists, and hold them up with 2.5" roofers and foam-board adhesive. Tape the joints with Glasclad tape. In the event you have a mechanical issue at some point down the road, removing and replacing a foam panel to gain access to a pipe or wire is not that big a deal.
Polyiso board is now considered to be the 'greenest' type of rigid foam insulation material (less nasty stuff in the manufacturing processes to muck up the atmosphere).
The easiest way to jack up and level the floors will probably be with a 2-or 3-ton bottle jack which you can buy at your local hardware or auto parts store for not much. Then pick up a few adjustable steel columns. Make up one or two 2- or 3-ply built-up 2x8 beams to lay across under the joists to reduce the unsupported joist span and lift the sagged areas. Tack the beam(s) in place under the joists and place an adjustable column at one end. Then use the bottle jack and a length of 4x4 to jack it all up to the level you want, starting at the other end of the beam and working across it in 4- to 6-foot increments. Place an adjustable column at each position once you've lifted things to the level necessary, remove the bottle jack and move on down to the next position.
Once the whole beam is lifted, use the adjustment screws on the tops of the steel columns to fine-tune things until the floor is as level and flat as you want it to be. (Expect to do some shimming on top, too.)
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
Three questions:
Do they make steel columns that short, only about 1-2 feet of crawlspace. Do you leave the columns there? Also would you recommend pressure treated plywood for the subfloor?
Thanks
Kevin
Do they make steel columns that short, only about 1-2 feet of crawlspace.
The adjustable columns I use come with two 4' sections one of which nests into the other. Holes are drilled every 4" in the smaller-diameter pipe, and a pin is provided that goes through these holes and locks onto the top of the larger pipe. So the height of the combined unit is adjustable in 4" increments from 4'4" up to just under 8'. The screw adjuster which comes with these columns takes care of fine adjustments between 0-4". The whole unit, both pipes, pin, screw adjuster, costs under $30 IIRC.
In your case, you will need to cut the larger pipe to the appropriate length minus enough to put in the screw adjuster. Use a carborundum metal-cutting disc in a circular saw to do the cutting. It shouldn't be difficult.
Figure on setting a base under each column. I'd use one 18x18 concrete patio tile floated on top of the gravel. Top that with 2 pieces of 2"x8"x8". Don't set the pipe column directly on the patio tile or it'll crack into pie wedges on you once you put it under load or shortly thereafter.
Do you leave the columns there?
Yes. They become a permanent part of the house's supporting structure. If in future years you find your floor settling again (if the columns sink some--after all, you're not putting down real footings and a full foundation wall under there), you will be able to tweak it back up in a jiffy by cranking a bit on the screw adjusters on top of each column.
Also would you recommend pressure treated plywood for the subfloor?
For many reasons, I am not a proponent of PT wood, so no, I would not recommend using PT plywood for the subfloor. There have been literally tens of millions of untreated plywood subfloors laid over the past seventy-five years, and the quasi-totality of these are still in perfectly good shape except perhaps where a toilet or shower has leaked over a period of many years. And that's due to bad plumbing installation, which is not something you should have to plan on. After all, a wood floor is not supposed to be subject to constant moisture or repeated wettings. If it is, there's something wrong with the way the entire house was designed and/or built.
If you are concerned about the humidity coming up from the ground in the crawl space, do as you intended and lay a polyethylene ground sheet down there, with another vapour barrier stapled up under the joists for good measure. You should also make sure the crawl space can be properly ventilated under the appropriate weather conditions. Remember, the best defense against rot is not to poison the wood, but to keep it dry in the first place.
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
Do they make steel columns that short, only about 1-2 feet of crawlspace.
yes, have seen them in various stores incl HD, 18~24"...
I was at the house this weekend and got to thinking. Since the perimeter of the house is the lowest point, if I remove the fireplace and the beams holding up the joists half way thru their span, 16 ft. maybe the bowed middle of the joists will come down to level and new beams can be installed. The fireplace is dead center, the fireplace supports one end of the beam which causes the center of the room to be higher than the perimeter walls.Kevin
Your new information has just added a whole new dimension to this problem.
If the perimeter of the house is the lowest point, and you have a masonry chimney with beam pockets in it that is holding the floor framing at it's highest point...then your entire foundation has been sinking (it's disappearingly unlikely that your chimney has been rising).
You described this as a beach cabin sitting over a crawl-space. Given this new info, I'm gonna guess your foundation is just posts, either concrete or wood (likely old utility poles). Am I close?
If that's the case, you now have a different scenario. (Hope you're sitting down, dude....)
You need to jack up the entire house and put in a new foundation which won't sink. This will require poured footings and either a poured concrete wall or a laid block wall on top of the footings.
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
Thanks for the quick reply. Its hard to type while laying on the floor, my wife says I read your post and passed out. Seriously I thought this might be the case. On the upside, the floor will more or less self level once it's on a foundation. They do both concrete or pilings (telephone poles) down here. Spoke with the construction office today about an addition and was told if the new space increases the overall value by more than 50%, house not land, than old and new must be above flood level, for me about 2 feet higher than it is now. So we may have ended up lifting it anyway. I'm going to sleep on it awhile, thanks for all your insight, I'll really appreciate it.Sincerely,Kevin
It's not really rocket science. If the place isn't too big and all the joists run in one direction you stand a chance of doing a lot of it yourself with rented gear and a good shovel or backhoe operator to help you placing the lifting beams.
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.