from personal experience it is a trail and error move to try to
readjust flooring. in the Northwest corner of our house for instance
the corrections in the basment made a difference in the way doors closed
and opened above that as well as the way furnature sets. so it is a
trial and error. another point is to find and or borrow a screw jack
and quarter inch at a time make a adjustment but do not nail or bolt
anything until you sense that all is okay above that. I had such a
heavy house ,/ screw jack and let someone borrow it but what I got
back was a cheap piece of garbage. this house jack had been previously
used n timbers Dale like you described in your oldhouse. Lee
On Sat,
Oct 03,
2009 at 09:41:08AM
-0400, Dale Leavens wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It is too wet outside to do any work and I am contemplating a problem I have
> had since moving into this old building.
>
> The original house has floor joists rough sawn but only 2 by 8 on 24 inch
> centers. We have a springy and uneven floor. Some of it is also because at
> some point one of the heating systems required framing in a big cold air
> return and they clearly didn't shore up the floor when cutting that joist,
> someone long since removed all of the cross bracing.
>
> I don't see sistering or adding joists in the usual way because of plumbing,
> wiring and duct work and I don't want to add more posts and beams. It
> recently struck me though that I could build in place an open web joist, jack
> things temporarily up then fix the lower cord. This lead me to think perhaps
> a better way might be to jack tings up just a little above the desired point
> then apply a web of strap steel to either face of the existing joists on the
> diagonal. A series of 'V's so that the diagonal essentially forms triangles.
> This would allow me to continue to respect wiring.
>
> More stiffening might be achieved by running a length of angle iron along the
> top inside corner against the floor and the joist and run a bolt through it
> and the straps and similarly at the bottom of the joist, I wonder how much
> would be enough and how much too much. At some point it might be better to
> fabricate individual steel webbed joists and fit them between the originals
> but then they may serve the purpose of lifting the originals which would
> continue to be pulling down after nearly a century.
>
> Just kicking around ideas. I would like to preserve as much open space there
> as I can.
>
> I don't have reasonable access to engineering or architectural services.
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
--
Common sense is the most evenly distributed quantity in the world.
Everyone thinks he has enough.
-- Descartes, 1637
.
