How To Level Your House Floor

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.

How to level your house floor. The level shouldn t be off by more than 3 16 inch 0 48 cm any minor deviations you happen to discover shouldn t impact the stability of the finished floor. You may find this task easier if you hold the string off the sagging floor joists by attaching blocks of the same thickness at opposite sides of the basement. You will have to make sure your joists can handle the addition of considerably more weight from the plywood subfloor and any floor coverings. Lay a long level downhill on the floor with one end of the level on the level part of the floor and the other end at the lowest point.

On the top side of the floor another fix it idea to lay down new hardwood over the existing floor. Check to ensure that the product you purchase is compatible with your floor. If your house is sagging or uneven due to sinking foundations then you can use a jack to raise the house back up to level. Assign a person to each jack and raise the jacks slowly and at the same time until the spirit level shows the house is level.

Check the level again. Place heavy duty floor jacks under the low spots. Place your level in several different spots as you did before to get a more accurate reading of the floor s overall slope. A plywood subfloor will bridge any minor waves in the existing floor and leveling compound would help too.

Raise the lower end of the level until the bubble is centered then measure the distance from the bottom of the level to the floor to find the depth of the dip. Determine how far the middle of the house needs to be lifted. Run a line outside the house and mark the low spots in the foundation. With a taut string water or laser level make a straight line from one side of the foundation to the other.