How To Jack Up A Floor To Level It

Your foundation may not be the problem.

How to jack up a floor to level it. For instance you may have a dining room floor that end to end is level but between those two points are various sags and dips. This determines the length of the new post. If an engineer found no structural issues you may be able to level the floor by applying a cement based self leveling floor product such as henry level. Jacking must proceed slowly.

Raise each jack by 1 8 inch at a time this will help to reduce any damage to window frames and plaster or drywall walls above the floor. Don t jack it up too high just high enough to remove the post. It took a long time for your floor to sink so you can t push it back up quickly without causing cracks and stress in the building. Make sure that the lumber or lally posts are perpendicular when jacking or.

Make repairs to settling piers and weak joists to fix swagging floors and roof lines. In some cases pouring floor leveling compound will fix the problem. The screw jack is attached with nails to the underside of the girder and to the wood block atop a concrete pier. The 4 inch lally posts can be replaced by 6 x 6 inch lumber.

Place one end of a level on the high spot and the opposite end to a predetermined level area on the floor. Instead it may be an issue with joists and beams below your floor that require shoring up. The inside pipe is threaded and adjusted up and down by turning a large wing nut. You cannot simply put a screw jack under the lowest spot and start turning.

Then measure the distance between the bottom of the level and the level area of flooring. A screw jack is a metal support post that can be adjusted to level the floor. Figure 3 jacking up floor joists. The only tools required is a bottle jack string straight claw hammer circular saw and a light source.

As with other structural repairs jacking must also be done appropriately. The long term solution for your sagging floor is to remove the flooring replace or fix the problems with the foundation that may contribute to the sag and replace the flooring. It consists of two heavy steel pipes one inside the other.