Stair Treads Coming Out of Routed Stringer – Open One Side – 1930s Home
JerLon
| Posted in Construction Techniques on
The stair treads are coming out of the routed stringer on my stairs. Staircase is open on one side and routed stringer on the other. I have included photos of the issue/concern and the access from below.
Any ideas on how to get the treads back into the stringer and tighten up? I’m not concerned about safety as the 2x stock is holding up the treads but don’t like how far out of the stringer the treads have come.
(I have also considered whether I might be better off replacing the stairs, adding stringers underneath the existing stairs…)
Replies
Turnbuckle.
I've seen this idea mentioned before. How would I attach the threaded rod to the striger on each side? Obviously, with the one side being exposed to the home I wouldn't want to screw all of the way through it...
One solution, of course, would be to go ahead and bore through the outside stringer, then cover up the hole with a plug of some sort.
But you really need to get purchase on the tread and riser anyway, so better would be to glue&screw a block to the tread/riser pair and anchor the outboard end of the turnbuckle to that. If you have access to the "back" side of the inboard stringer you could get away with a simple all-thread rod instead of a turnbuckle.
To add to what others have said, I see that there are 2x4s under the treads. Are they cglue to the treads?
If so, you could drill the 2x4s and then pull the treads back into the stringers with lags bolts thru the 2x4 into the stringer.
Might need to screw a hook to the 2x4s to attach come along or siilar to pull the treads back toward the risers to get them to go into the stringer?
Are your treads level from side to side? I'd guess the floor on the left as you look at them has sagged and the stairs have dropped on that side. If that's the case the stairs(floor) will have to be raised to get the stairs to fit.
Treads level
florida wrote:
Are your treads level from side to side? I'd guess the floor on the left as you look at them has sagged and the stairs have dropped on that side. If that's the case the stairs(floor) will have to be raised to get the stairs to fit.
Yes, the treads are level. The floor has sagged a bit in the home (see my other post) but the treads still seem to be level.
Florida has a point in that, looking at the first two pictures, clearly the treads have dropped relative to the stringer. On the underside we see blocks fastened to the stringer, apparently in an attempt to prevent/correct this drop. They have not worked, however. (Installed too late, and without "preload"?)
Right on...
You have two issues...how to repair what's happened...and perhaps the bigger question: Why has this happened? If you don't solve the "why" question, any repairs could be only a temporary patch that will show up again. Someone mentioned in other places in the thread that the wall to the right side may have bowed...if this were the case, I wouldn't expect the treads near the bottom to have pulled away. I would think it's some sort of a settlement issue or a framing problem around the floor opening for the stairs. For example - are the floor joists pulling away from the stair headers? Any cracking of the ceiling or walls below? Are those 2x4 scraps nailed to the stringer original??
Although it's kind of hard to tell from the photos, it looks like the stair treads at the bottom and the top of the stairs are ok; the ones in the middle are pulled out. That is the same situation I found with the bowed wall. I think the OP needs to tell us which treads have pulled loose.
This is the same house where the wall across the hallway has settled half an inch. It's reasonable to presume that whatever mechanism is causing that is at work here as well. (As it is, given the age of the house, the settling is probably not "active" and the structure can be assumed to be reasonably static.)
Ah so !
Or is is not PC to say ah so?
Is It The Wall?
A friend had this problem at her much newer house. Turns out that it wasn't the stairs moving, but rather a pronounced bowing of the studs in the wall adjacent to the stairs. Since the stringers are nailed directly to the studs (thru the plaster/sheetrock), they moved with the studs and thus became disengaged from the treads. The bow in the wall was easy to demonstrate by running a string line from the top to the bottom of the stairs, just above the moulding on the stringer. (In this case there was a likely cause of the bowing...a main hot air trunk line was run up the wall from a new basement furnace when the heating was converted from electric to gas.It was closed into a chase against the wall in the adjacent room...that's where the bow developed. Probably dried them more than they ever were before...that's the theory, anyway.)
Treads
There are 14 stair treads. The treads that are out of the housed stringer are: 3, 4 (these two only a bit moved) and 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. If counting from the bottom. So, the bottom few are okay and the top four are okay.
In terms of a potential bow in the wall, if anything, the wall is out more in the area of the stairs than the upper portion of the walls. So, the small bow would have helped keep the treads in the stringer.
I am wondering if it is simply a mix of: 1) Some minor settling in a home that is 80 years old and, 2) The nature of a staircase that is open on one side and nothing held the treads in the stringer except 80 year old glue. I have noticed that it got worse after we moved our furniture into the home and there was a lot of weight going up the outside of the stairs. With that weight on one side, there is nothing holding the treads and that wall back toward the main wall.
More Information
I did some more digging and it looks like the inside wall (bottom circle in picture) has tilted away from the stringer. I think this could be the issue. Maybe it just isn't framed well or maybe there is another issue... The area that has tilted away is in the area where the treads have pulled out the furthest.
View Image
This is the inside of that wall where it is clearly not level.
View Image
Understand that the only thing that wall has to brace it vertically is the stair treads and risers. The design depends on them being securely fastened at both ends.
Fix
DanH wrote:
Understand that the only thing that wall has to brace it vertically is the stair treads and risers. The design depends on them being securely fastened at both ends.
That is what I am thinking... Glue held the treads into the risers for a number of years but once the glue dried out, the pressure caused the outside wall to begin to fall away. The way I see it, there are two options...
1) Replace staircase and wall with new staircase and wall.
2) Remove plaster and lathe, and attach wood between the inside and outside walls to prevent the wall from falling away any further.
I think you could make a turnbuckle approach work.
Details?
DanH wrote:
I think you could make a turnbuckle approach work.
So, remove plaster, eye bolt in each 2x4, cable between with turnbuckle? Any suggestion on where to get these materials or any other considerations?
You might not need to remove plaster, if you could anchor one end to the tread/riser. Note that they're well-fastened to the outside wall -- it's the inside wall/stringer that's the problem.
Jer
After looking at these and the basement pictures id get down below and rethink the jumble of posts and beams. Some may be original, others added to attempt to correct problems. Think of the whole picture b/4 you start.
best of luck