Crawlspace Foundation - Floor Leveling
I own a midsized house (about 1100 ft plus filled in garage) on a crawlspace foundation. It was built in the 60's. The floors are not level, there are cracks in the ceiling and above doors, and some of the doors do not close. I know I can rent hydraulic bottle jacks for about $10 a day and I can get a water level to see when one side of the room is the same height as another.
However, I have never actually leveled a floor before. I am the consumate DIYer, so don't tell me to call in an expert - I've already priced that route and I want to give it a try myself before having to pay them to do it. Can anyone who has done this tell me where to start? Front of the house? Back? Middle? What materials do I need? Is there a book or manual out there with step by step instructions?
Not enough info. Where has it settled?
Has the foundation settled or rotten wood or just sagging of floor joist?
Easy to say if I could see but hard to give just general advice.
i believe it is just settling in the middle of the house. Wood is still solid but the joists are sagging. The concrete blocks under the joists may have sunk into the dirt.
I have done lots of these send me some details,renting bottle jacks is a waste of money.
Have you gotten the help you needed? My experience with this is limited, although I did do one house where we used corkscrew type jacks. This is low tech, The jacks are designed so that you put a bar through a hole and twist and you can raise and lower the jack easily. We put four or five dirrectly on the foundation, leveled the floor, and inserted postsin the ponywall to support the floor. Every situation is different so maybe this helps?
This topic is of interest to me. I recently purchased a 150 yr old brick building. It's two stories, each about 2500 sq ft. The house sags into the middle and floor joists in one room in particular are very saggy. I would really like to level the floors, at least the seriously sagging one. I have similar questions to the poster. However, I also wonder if, with a house that has stood for 150 years through more than one major flood, etc., if I should just be happy with the foundation and work directly on levelling the joists themselves.
If I had a nickel for every foundation correction job I have done or every beatiful day I have spent crawling around under some crusty building, I could buy enough beer to drown my sorrows. This work is not fun but I make a lot of money doing it.
Your post footings (piers)have probably failed. How big are they? How much crawl space is there? What is the soil condition like? Rocks, mud, hard, soft? What are the size of the posts, girders, joists?? Spans between posts? Do the girders go all the way through or did they break the joints over posts?
I could write a book on all the different tricks. In the end, no technique is BS if that is what works for you. I have used bottle jacks in various sizes (screw type), hydraulic jacks and JP44s out of the Simpson catalog. JP44s are cheap little adjustable post caps. You drill a 7/8" hole in the top of a 4x4/4x6 or any length and place the JP on top of the post, then you can turn a big nut with a cresent wrench. The adjustment is only 3", but you can set them as many as you need where you need them really fast. Sometimes I go in between the existing piers and dig new footings and install new posts with the JP44s on them, so if the soil is expansive and moves seasonally, I can tweak them as needed. Then you can change out the posts on the existing piers with new posts and JPs. You will have overkill bearing.
Usually, I work from under the house. A water level with a long hose is low tech but works. You don't need a line of sight like with a laser of builders level. I would take a survey of the perimiter foundation and see if it is level. Find the high point and the low points. Maybe make a little map. You might have to make compromises with the plane of the floor if the foundation is not level. If the piers sunk maybe the perimiter footing sunk too. Pick a "benchmark" for your hose level. Then string lines both ways along the girders and perpendicular to the girders. You should be able to dial in the floors. Sometimes, if the perimeter is not level and you can't set the piers to a benchmark, the best you can do is to make the girders go back in a straight line. I have had to do that to houses where a pencil will roll on the floor but the floors are in a plane and all the doors and windows got free. I hope some of this makes sense and helps?
If you could do a little survey and post the conditions, I could address specific problems.
I have gone to the local CarpetMart and grabbed old wall to wall carpet out of thier dumpster, cut it into sections to be able to crawl around more easily. Take it back when you're done.