Hi All,
I am starting a new renovation in a week or two, and step one is to level the floor. We are not going ot life the floorboards but rather do it frmo nuder the floor, we have abuot 1.5 foot clearance. Can anyone suggest how they might do this w.r.t. ascertaining correct levels, packing to the new leevl, and adding ant caps, as this is the first time I have done such a task.
Regards
Mike
“Its all beer and skittles really.”
I did a floor level and re-stump on my PPoR a few years ago with my brother-in-law. Some places were 1.5 foot clearance – not nice, but very do-able. The house was 75 years old, so a lot of the old concrete piers had crumbled. The floors were like trampolines!
We used a car jack to raise the floor. We put it under the beams, resting on a sheet of steel 1″ thick. After jacking the floor and running a spirit level over it to check, we then dug a 2 foot deep hole under each beam using small spades, long screw-drivers and small crow bars. The width of the holes was about 1 foot diameter. It was slow and awkward, but we had lots of time, lots of beers and a good flood light.
Directly in the middle of each hole we attached a length of treated pine poles (ants don’t eat them) like they use for fences etc to the beam using house frame strapping and self tapping screws – all made of non-rusting steel.
We cut the poles to a length that left a space of minimum 4″ between the bottom of the treated pine pole and the bottom of the dug out hole after they were attached to the beams.Then we poured quick-set cement into the holes, making sure to get a good amount under the treated pine poles, put the hose in and mixed the cement and water very thoroughly until it started to ‘go off’.
After 24 hours we removed the jack and job was done. Then repeat. We had 4 car jacks.
There were a couple of spots where the clearance was too low, so we cut the floor boards out and did it from inside the house. We were covering with carpet so we replaced the floor with yellow tongue particle board.
Cheers,
Marc.
[email protected]“we get sent lemons; it’s up to us to make lemonade”
Wow, sounds like fun. And so did you put the pine polts in the same place where the piers ere? i.e. did you jack the floor up at each old pier, remove gthe pier, and then dig 2 foot deep in its place? And so now you have pine piers?
Thanks
Mike
“Its all beer and skittles really.”
Good question; no – we put a new pier next to the old one, about a foot or so away. Too hard to remove the old one.
There are still a number of the original piers, as well as our new ones. By the way; we went overboard a bit to make sure the job was A1.
Reserve a weekend, grab a good mate, a slab of Vic Bitter, plenty of snags and chops for the barby, tool box and overalls and get into it. If I was back in Aus I’d come and help!!
You will probably use close to 1 x 20kg bag of quickset concrete per pier (from memory).
I just had a thought – get some miner’s lights with the elastic strap to put on your head. Much better than a flood light, but have that as well.
Cheers,
Marc.
[email protected]“we get sent lemons; it’s up to us to make lemonade”
Rapid set concrete is not suitable for structural purposes.It shouldn’t be used for stumps.
Tools
Fair point, but we were fixing bouncing floorboards. No load bearing problems involved that I can see.
As I said in my post; we went overboard to make sure it was done well.
8 years later; still all clear.Cheers,
Marc.
[email protected]“we get sent lemons; it’s up to us to make lemonade”
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