How To Jack A House Floor

Learn the proper way to install temporary support posts and jack up a sinking house.

How to jack a house floor.

One of the most common complaints of old house owners is sagging floors. Make repairs to settling piers and weak joists to fix swagging floors and roof lines. The sagging floor was the symptom and somewhere under the house there had to be a cause. The only tools required is a bottle jack string straight claw hammer circular saw and a light source.

The steel plates should be a minimum of 25 inch 0 6 cm thickness and large enough to distribute the full load of that jack across the beam. Jack the beam up slowly so that it can gradually shift and readjust until level again. In my own house for example every floor pitches toward the center stairwell. Here s a quick review of the most common problems and a few of the typical remedies.

It is critical to use heavy steel plates between the jack and the beams to avoid crushing wood fibers in the beams destroying their integrity or worse yet punching a hole through the floor. This is a great way to correct problems before installing a permanent so. Jacking up a floor and leveling it is easy with these simple instructions. It has to be jacked up slowly over days or even weeks to avoid cracking drywall plaster windows and even structural elements.

Jack up that portion of the house and place new footers. Jack up the beam so that the house is level. You cannot jack up a house in one day. Well after doing the navy seal crawl up under the house we found that the joists that were supporting that floor were not actually attached to the sill plate any longer as seen in the photograph below.

Anything involving 20 ton house jacks will take time. While few of us are interested in jacking up an entire house complete with cribs girders timbers and everything else you need in order to lift a house off the ground there are a number of foolhardy souls among us who feel the need to jack up a portion of the house in order to insert an extra tier or beam for repairs or to level an old sloping floor. Jacking can mean different things. Place the jack beneath the sinking beam.