Replies

1. 
   oldhand | Feb 20, 2014 06:50pm | #1

   hair splitting

   For a house of that age being that  level is bragging rights.

   If it were mine I wouldn't try to level it further unless it was real, real easy.

2. 
   deadnuts | Feb 20, 2014 10:15pm | #2

   IMO (you asked) 1 inch in 3 foot out of level is horrendous. Water levels have been around a long before this house was built. They should have used one. If you're already doing structural work, then my advice is to fix it to within 1/4" tolerance everywhere. You'd be amazed what you can do residentially with an assortment of temporary jack posts, a hydraulic jack, and a sawzall. If it's a settlement or rot issue, then I'd address either of those issues as well.

1. 
   DanH | Feb 21, 2014 06:44am | #3

   Where did you read one inch in three feet??

3. 
   bac478 | Feb 21, 2014 07:32am | #4

   I didn't feel like putting it in CAD but hopefully this pencil sketch will suffice.  The beams are low relative to the sill on two sides of the house.  They are level with the sill on the other two sides.  The board subfloor rests atop the rim joist where the floor joists are parallel to the foundation.  I call it a rim joist but it is really just vertical blocking for the subfloor and not a traditional rim joist like in platform framing.  It is balloon framed so the studs don't sit on top of the rim joist they just sit on the sill.  Anyway, the subfloor slopes down quickly to meet the level of the beam I installed and temporarily shored.  So like I had mentioned in my first post, there is a ~1" drop in about 3 or 4 feet just inside the front door.  I have come up with some options in my head:

   1. Install beam level, jack up subfloor/joists near the sill and pop the rim joist out.  Rip rim joist at an angle so the subfloor can sit level and at the height of the beam and floor in the rest of the house.

   2. Install beam out of level so that the end near the foundation is at the height that the subfloor is at currently.  This would essentially distribute the 1" difference across the length of the 16' beam instead of over only 3' near the foundation.

   3. Go back to the beam at the middle of the house and move it up 1".  This would also require shimming the walkout wall I reframed up 1".  I would have to install all new posts under the beam at the middle of the house.  This is a lot of repeat work and frankly sucks.

   Believe me, my bottle jacks and sawzall have already been through quite a workout in the past few months.  The walkout wall at the back of the house was a little low and that already got pushed up and reframed.  All the scabbed floor joists at the back of the house have also been replaced and the floor back there has been leveled.

   Thanks

   
4. 
   bac478 | Feb 24, 2014 06:57pm | #5

   Any recommendations?

   Thanks

5. 
   spclark | Mar 12, 2014 11:07pm | #6

   Option #1

   - would be my choice, after looking at your sketch.

   26 years ago I took it upon myself to replace 55' of what was the existing foundation left from the original structure on two sides of my house. The builder had set 15 - 30 gallon oil drums in three lines, all resting on poured concrete pads well above frost line. After filling the drums with more concrete he placed solid 6" x 12" beams (clear something, salvaged from an Army barracks he'd bought sometime around 1950) 15' long to serve as sills then framed up the floor with 4'x8's from the same salvage. Concrete was then poured in between each can atop the ground & up to the sills. Great for chipmunks & mice but not good for drainage or cold weather.

   Anyway, by this time I'd built a new place over all but these two walls so putting in footings & new foundation to match the rest seemed worthwhile. Did all the shoring using 8"x8" timbers, wood wedges & a couple two ton bottle jacks, cribbed up support for the first floor roof directly above the shored floor about 3' back from the exterior walls then rented a small excavator & got to it.

   Took all of 3 weeks until I could back-fill, did the 25' south wall first then moved the plywood forms to add the 30' section. All alone.

   New PT mudsills went in with ~ 1/16" clearance. Walls above reconfigured for new windows & relocated front door the next spring.

   Pic shows the two sides I'm describing above after I re-stained cedar siding last summer.

   
1. 
   DanH | Mar 12, 2014 11:10pm | #7

   You know it's a solid foundation when you can hang the house upside-down from it!

1. 
   spclark | Mar 19, 2014 12:19pm | #8

   Got THAT right!!

   I've noticed the thumbnail preview's usually screwed up somehow; rotated 90 or 180 degrees, compressed one way & not the other. When I look at the full image though they look OK. Do you still see 'em weird when you do that?

   These are straight from my iPhone yet even viewed on a Windows 8 laptop previews & full images still behave the same.

1. 
   calvin | Mar 19, 2014 04:39pm | #9

   All (most) of the photo's sent to us from my daughter and her I-phone-are sideways or upside down when we open them.  They appear right side up if shown in the email.  This on a Windows 7 computer using IE.

   If I open them on my I-pad-they are right side up both the email and when opened or saved.

   This could be where the problem arises-not some mystical thing with this site. 

   All the photo's I post here from our computer are right side up.  The sizing if I embed them is what is a crapshoot.

   I'm back on IE now..........Firefox presented me with a barage of those highlighted ad links (using words in the body of posts here)...............got rid of that, reset the computer to an earlier date and ran malwarbytes and no more FF.

   But of course, I could be wrong-BT seems to blame everything on IE.

2. 
   DanH | Mar 19, 2014 07:55pm | #10

   The photos are sent with an "orientation" attribute that indicates which way is up.  Your "full image" display reads that attribute, but the attribute is lost when you post them here.

1. 
   DanH | Mar 19, 2014 08:05pm | #11

   Lessee --

   (A brief round-trip through IrfanView.)