
In this case a bathroom leak years ago had caused the wood to rot in this one particular part of the house. It was discovered during a home inspection and I was brought in to fix the issue.
There are a couple different issues to address with this. First, I focused on removing the rotted portion. Other than being difficult to access, it was fairly easy to chip out with a wood chisel. There were still pieces on either side of the damage that were solid and doing their job holding up the floor.

The floor had sagged about 1/2" because of the deterioration, however, because there was a tile floor in the bathroom above, my goal was not to raise the floor back up, but rather to stabilize it so it doesn't move any more. If I try to correct the sag I'll likely crack all the tile above and have more issues to deal with.

Adding a beam like this is a very common method for adding additional support to an area affected by rot or termite damage, or possibly just undersized framing, etc. It's important to install a beam so that you are spreading the load from several joists, rather than simply jacking up just one joist. If you do this, you'll most likely have a distinctive 'hump' in the floor because the jack is only raising the one point instead of a wider area.

-Peter
www.CarpentryGuy.com
No comments:
Post a Comment