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I have a 100+ yearold house w/ sagging hardwood floors. I know that I can use 4×4 timbers and jack the floors up(very slowly)but am wondering just how slowly I should raise them each time? Should I raise the floors one room at a time or all the floors at once? Any ideas will be appreciated.
Thanx
Bill Miller
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Bill, more information is needed. Construction of framing, layout, causitive issues... etc...
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Bill Miller--You could face at least two problems while leveling/straightening your floors. 1.Lumber that has been "bent" for years often times won't straighten and the sag rises with the lifting. 2.what you gain in one area might cause problems elsewhere. I have always been curious what "slowly" means. Your plaster will crack now matter how slowly you move.
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Bill,
Dallas has some very good points.
Leveling an old house is a very dangerous business that is best left to the professionals.
I'm dead serious about this.
Don't try this at home kids.
Ed. Williams
* Bill,
Joseph Fusco View Image
*Bill,Listen to Ed and Joe they know what they're talking about. There are other methods to straightening floors then jacking. Most people who live in 100+ year old houses just chalk up the wobbles to "charm". Richard Max
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Ah! Richard Max, have told a lot of people it would cost more than it was worth to "level" their floors but never thought about telling them to chalk it up to "charm" luvs it, thanks.
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Dallas,
Hey, no problem. :)
Actually I picked up the 'charm' thing from real estate agents...LOL
There are lots of old houses around here.
We're doing a major reno/addition to a 1900 neo classical right now. Lots of charm in that baby.
We did level out the kitchen area though, it was out to the tune of 3" over 24' and weewahed up and down all over the place. I just felt that was a little too much charm for a new kitchen.
Drop dead on the money level now.
Dirty and dog tired,
Richard Max
*I did something similar with our house a couple of years ago. The floors bounced like heck, and I wanted to stiffen things up a bit. So I added a beam in the basement, with several adjustable posts under it. What I found was that the floor joists hadn't settled evenly. Some of them were way down, and others were relatively flat. So I figured I would bring them all up slowly until they were about level. Trouble was, the plaster didn't care for it at all. I jacked slowly - only a 1/4 of a turn every other day or so. But I still got a couple of large cracks. What I eventually did was to back the screws off a bit, shove some shims under the joists that weren't down on the beam, and then tighten the screws back up. My floors still aren't level, but they sure have a better "feel" to them.
*Bill if have never done this before get someone with the insurance and know how to level your floors. As the above post's read there's more to this then just jacking a little everday. Well Mr. Insurance Ajuster I was just tring to level up the floors................
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> Listen to Ed and Joe they know what they're
> talking about. There are other methods to
> straightening floors then jacking. Most people
> who live in 100+ year old houses just chalk up
> the wobbles to "charm".
My friend has a 230 yo house. His bedroom floor sags 2" in the middle and he asked what to do about it. Knowing that he's had rotten beams in part of the house, and what he was willing to do, I told him the same thing - "That's the charm of having a 200 yo house." Hehe.
But I did suggest several ways of "hiding" the sag so that it wasn't so noticable.
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Hi Bill,
I prefer my character in the form of patina, not crookedness, so when possible I try to straighten things up as much as is practical.
Leveling "sagging" floors isn't really that big a deal, but it does take a good understanding of the house's construction, and a rational analysis of what will and won't be affected by your lifting efforts.
First you need an understanding of the load paths through the house, and then you need to corectly figure out where and why they have failed.
Is the "sag" in the middle of the floor joist span where there is the least support? Is it where the central support beam is? Is the beam rotting? Is its footing settling? Has the framing shrunk or compressed from the load? Are the sills rotting and compressing, causing the perimeter of the house to fall in relation to the rest of the house? Is the foundation too shallow and heaving, causing the perimeter of the house to rise and fall with the seasons? A good structural engineer ought to be able to help you pinpoint the weak spots.
After you are reasonably sure of the cause for the sag, then you can address the question of whether you ought to fix it or not.
One good reason not level is if there has been a lot of work built on top of the sagging area after the sagging occurred. If you level in this case, the new work will get thrown seriously out of whack. If everything is old and has moved with the sag, I like to try and lift it all back up before doing any major building on top of it.
Vague answers for a vague question.
Steve
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Bill
Living over here in England I'm often called upon to level floors in properties over 100 y/o.The easiest way to remove the sag from the centre of the floor is to carefully remove whatever flooring you have and scab straight 2x4s to the original floor joists then replace the flooring, this method will usually not damage the ceiling below or crack any of the plaster(plus the job can usually be carried out by 2 men in under 2 days)
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I have a 100+ yearold house w/ sagging hardwood floors. I know that I can use 4x4 timbers and jack the floors up(very slowly)but am wondering just how slowly I should raise them each time? Should I raise the floors one room at a time or all the floors at once? Any ideas will be appreciated.
Thanx
Bill Miller