Jacking it Up - What We've Learned So Far

This lovely view is typical of what you'll find under our house. This picture is from our infamous house inspection, it shows one of the few useful things we learned, that one of the ducts was disconnected from the register in the floor. You can also get a clear view of what the jacks under our house look like, these are two of many decorating our underground landscape.

The state of our wavy, sagging floor has been a constant source of frustration and discussion in our house. First it was "should we fix it or live with it", then it was "let's try to fix it", and now that we've gotten part way there it's "we've got to fix it". Unfortunately it's not quite as simple as we first assumed. Here's what I mean.

Don't try to jack up the floor when you've had the rainiest summer on record and then added on two hurricanes for good measure -. It's wet under our house, and when the ground is damp, the cement blocks the jacks sit on sink into the ground. You jack and jack and jack and nothing happens. In reality we should probably dig a hole and fill it with cement to create a stable cement pad, but it's just not possible in a 3 ft high crawlspace. The other unfortunate thing we've learned is that we need to do some major work on drainage around our house. Granted this is the rainiest summer in ages, but we've got issues.

Hydraulic Jacks are great for jacking up the house but you don't need 8, you really only need one or 2 - Hmmmh, yes hydraulic jacks can be kind of pricey, especially when you buy 8. See, the thing is, after a while, hydraulic jacks can lose a little pressure, meaning that they lower a little bit. That's usually fine, I mean when you jack up your car you're usually not doing it for say..... 50 years!!!!!! We learned this one the hard way. Typically what you do is jack up the house with the hydraulic jack, and then put in permanet screw jacks. The screw jacks stay in place and the hydraulic jacks are pulled. Let's hope there's a market for hydraulic jacks on e-bay.

Finally and most importantly......Trying to communicate through the floor to your husband, that he may have jacked the beam up too much, is not a good thing - Enough said.

Here's our take on the project so far.

1. We've probably spent as much money on jacks as it would have cost to pay someone to do the job.
2. But they probably wouldn't have done as good a job and paid as much attention to detail as my awesome husband did.

We really are almost done, the worst spot is fixed, the big dip in the kitchen doorway. At least the door frame is a little more level, now it doesn't look like your your stepping into a fun house. The one spot left to raise is under the kitchen sink. When that parts done we'll actually be able to run our dishwasher without propping a chair against the dishwasher door. Ahh, the simple pleasures.

Comments

[Nick]

Heh...with 8 jacks you could lift an aircraft carrier.

Seriously though, during our big remodeling we had one jack holding up a substantial portion of the back half of our three story house. They are incredibly strong. As you say, though, they aren't meant as actual structural elements; for that you need posts, beams, footings, etc.

[Roger]

I'm in a similar position, but have not yet closed on the property. I did notice several spots in the flooring with dips with the biggest problems being in the bathroom, kitchen and laundry area. I did have a home inspector go through the property and he seems to have done a good job. His biggest area of concern for us is the flooring. Apparently the house support beams are sitting on top of concrete blocks which sit on the dirt. Is this what you mean by pier and beam? Some of the wood has fungus/mold and may need to be treated or replaced. Other areas have been rigged with shims to try to level. Was your flooring structure similar?

What kind of costs, ballpark, am I going to be looking at to have someone professional level the floors as opposed to doing it myself? Did you have to replace the wood flooring inside or was it salvaged? Was there any damage to walls or ceilings (cracking) due to jacking up the floor? We love the character and location of the home, just don't want to get in over our heads with repair costs.

Your comments and advice would be much appreciated.

[Carol]

Regarding Roger's post- yes basically that sounds like pier and beam construction to me- how far down do the concrete 'blocks' go under the frost line? Sounds to me like your house could need new piers if they really are just blocks sitting on the ground. Our house has piers that are made of bricks that go down at least a foot (I don't think they poured footings in 1925 for the brick piers). New houses have larger piers of blocks usually with a structural one course thickness of blocks all the way around with footings around the entire perimeter.
Anyway, it is common for the beam sitting near the ground to get damaged and need replacing. Jacking and installation of pressure treated posts is pretty cheap. You might need a drop girder going perpendicular to your floor joists (is there is enough space in your crawl space). This can perk up a room that's sagging. with the limitation that your joists could be so curved they may not completely go back, especially if they lift up off the edge of the building- we paid 1200$ for a beam like this. On upper floors people jack up individual joists and sister in new ones to keep them straight- this means ripping out all you plaster on the ceilings, of course.
Try joining the www.lovemyoldhome.com email group, they know everything and have helped me many times.
Carol

[em]

Hi Roger,
It seems like your in a situation very similar to
ours. My first suggestion to you would be to hire a
structural engineer to take a look at the foundation
if your inspector has any concerns. In retrospect
it's something I wish we would have done. You would
get an honest unbiased opinion on your situation, he
also may be able to give you an idea on repair costs.

It sounds like you have a classic pier and beam
foundation, we have exactly what you have except the
piers are brick instead of cememt. How tall is your
crawlspace? ours is about 3 ft high all over.

We had several repairs paid for by the previous
homeowners, mainly sistering the joists where there
was termite damage. That in itself is fairly common
and not a big deal. Also shims or jacks under the
house is fairly common too and not an indicator of
major problems. Any home experiences some shifting or
movement over time.

I don't know what your square footage is but our house
is about 1300 square feet. On the high end I would
think that to pay to have the floor jacked would cost
about $1500. If your house is bigger or the crawl
space is extra difficult to access it could cost more.
We live in NC so repair costs could be cheaper than
in other areas of the country. We had no damage to
the floor from jacking and minimal cracks. We already
had a lot of cracks from shifting and movement over
the past 80 years so what few we had were not that big
a deal. We had replastered everything before we did
the repair (not a good idea probably) so we saw just
few minimal cracks after jacking. The jacking can be
done slowly, a few cranks a week, but most contractors
probably will want to do it all it once which may mean
more cracks. We did it all at once so I don't know
what the difference would have been if we did it more
slowly.

Hope this helps! Good luck and let me know if you
have any other questions.

Emily

[Shelina]

hello to everyone,
We are looking at a house to buy that has a horrible floor that is rotting b/c it is in a flood zone in NC. The whole house would need to be lifted. Does anyone know what the cost of jacking up a 1400 sq ft home? Thanks

[Sandy K]

Plese suggest a company that can Jackup my house and move it to a different location Massachusetts.

[Jacques Mattheij]

That was quite informative, thank you. I am in roughly the same situation, only in europe where they build the houses out of brick rather than wood, so the lift is considerably heavier. Our house is built on clay and it has sunk away as the clay dehydrated over the years. The house was built in 1903, and the maximum level difference is about 6 inches! best regards, Jacques