I have an old 20’x20′ wood-framed barn/garage set on stacked concrete block piers on a slope. The front of the barn is ground-level, while the rear is approximately 50 inches off the ground. This barn was present when we bought the property, and we use it as a woodworking shop / storage. Over time, the barn has shifted around, and now one rear corner pier is leaning. The floor is out of square.
I’ve read multiple articles online about how to straighten a leaning building, but not how to straighten an out-of-square floor. I have easy access to the underside. My ultimate goal is to put the barn back where it belongs, and then rectify the situation by digging holes below the frostline for proper piers.
Currently, the barn floor is a parallelogram, with the two sides parallel to one another but “offset” by about 3-6 inches. I have house jacks to be able to raise the barn off piers, but I’m unsure what to do to “snap” it back in place.
Any tips/ideas? I’d like to avoid a major operation with steel I-beams, etc, if possible, but if that’s the only way, so be it. Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.
Replies
is it just the one pier that is leaning?
how are the walls? are they leaning?
if just the one pier is shifted and nothing else under the barn i would be inclined to think that the building was probablly out of square from the get go.
What kind of flooring system do you have?
It's essentially one pier that's leaning. I can use a jack and cribbing to support the rear corner to remove/straighten/replace the leaning post, but it doesn't solve the overall issue. The front of the barn (ground level) had some clay-type soil that I think was freezing and "pushing" one side of the barn rearward. We've owned the property for ten years, and the movement was very slow, so it took me a little while to catch on to what was happening. I've since replaced all the clay soil with good-draining gravel, and the movement has stopped. I just can't figure out how to reverse it.
The walls aren't leaning, but you can see a twist as a result of the floor having been pushed out of square. The floor is framed with with a 8"x8" rough-sawn sill running around the outside with a middle 8"x8" beam in the center of the barn. The floor joists are rough-sawn 4"x8"s. Flooring material is rough-sawn 2" thick hemlock boards of varying widths, generally 8-10". The barn would benefit greatly from replacing the flooring material with a sheet good for stability, but I think that should be a final step post-repair.
I've thought about using a cable puller like you would for a leaning wall, but I'm unsure if the cable puller will be able to overcome the friction of the posts. Any thoughts on this?
jm
i never have and would most likely never use a cable pull to try and square anything like this up.
can you see if any of the 8x8 sill has shifted off the pier centers anywhere else? should be most evident along the same side as the failing pier. if not i would think that there could have been some movement but the building was build out of square from the begining.
I dont see how you will correct a 6'' skewed floor without doing a sizable amount of damage to walls, corners and possiblly roof.
if you are sure your movement has stopped then i would lift the section that has the leaning pier, re set the pier and pull up your subfloor and replace it with some 4x8 tongue and groove.
You might be able to pull it up straight with a cable.
wire rope and winch, on diagonals as required
I'm surprised SOMEONE hasn't showed up to tell him to get an engineer to help him fix a barn built by someone who likely never graduated highschool.
might be in the original plan..
Any chance it was built out of square originally? If it had shifted that much the framing joints should be obviously showing the skew.
Now as far as keeping it from falling over that sounds like a certain good idea.