How To Jack A House Floor

Jacking up a floor and leveling it is easy with these simple instructions.

How to jack a house floor. It has to be jacked up slowly over days or even weeks to avoid cracking drywall plaster windows and even structural elements. Anything involving 20 ton house jacks will take time. Jacking can mean different things. In my own house for example every floor pitches toward the center stairwell.

Although generally only an annoyance sagging floors can be an indication of worsening problems. One of the most common complaints of old house owners is sagging floors. 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. 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.

You cannot jack up a house in one day. Learn the proper way to install temporary support posts and jack up a sinking house. The sagging floor was the symptom and somewhere under the house there had to be a cause. Use the other nonsagging beams as your ideal so that you can bring all of the house s beams back into a level arrangement.

Here s a quick review of the most common problems and a few of the typical remedies. The only tools required is a bottle jack string straight claw hammer circular saw and a light source. Place the jack beneath the sinking beam. Jack up that portion of the house and place new footers.

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. Tiger brand adjustable floor jack model js 15 15 gauge floor jacks telescoping jack for temporary support size range 1 1 3 4 4 out of 5 stars 368 19 67 19. This is a great way to correct problems before installing a permanent so. Jack up the beam so that the house is level.