Member
· Västra Götaland
· 780 posts
We live in a house built in 1926. In the 70s, the previous owners tore down a wall on the ground floor and put up a wooden beam as a replacement for the old wall. Now, about 45 years later, this beam has shown signs of giving way a little. It's not a disaster and probably completely normal; you can notice it on the ceiling below and the floor above. There's about a 1 cm sag over 2 meters of floor/ceiling.
My initial thought to solve this was simply to jack up the beam from below over a longer period of time, but I talked to a carpenter who said you don't do anything about it, you simply level the floor (with a leveling compound or other material) when you lay new flooring upstairs. And when we put a ceiling on the ground floor, we do it with battens on the walls and make sure it's level.
Are there any right and wrongs here? I can understand that there might be quite strange side effects from "pressing up" the beam from below (as I said, very slowly), but it also feels good to have it done correctly (?). But as I said, the house is almost 100 years old, and everything isn't perfectly straight anyway.
Attached is a picture from upstairs showing a bench next to a door frame, where you can clearly see the slope.
Thoughts?
My initial thought to solve this was simply to jack up the beam from below over a longer period of time, but I talked to a carpenter who said you don't do anything about it, you simply level the floor (with a leveling compound or other material) when you lay new flooring upstairs. And when we put a ceiling on the ground floor, we do it with battens on the walls and make sure it's level.
Are there any right and wrongs here? I can understand that there might be quite strange side effects from "pressing up" the beam from below (as I said, very slowly), but it also feels good to have it done correctly (?). But as I said, the house is almost 100 years old, and everything isn't perfectly straight anyway.
Attached is a picture from upstairs showing a bench next to a door frame, where you can clearly see the slope.
Thoughts?
That is probably an example of long-term deformation due to weight. I don't even think it's possible to push it back to a straight position, possibly with a permanent column underneath. Don't think it's a danger, just an aesthetic issue. Guess the only way to solve it permanently is to tear up and replace the beam with a stronger one. If replacing the beam due to risk of collapse is not justified, then your carpenter's advice is probably what's realistic if one is seriously bothered by the situation. Otherwise, possibly adjusting the floor during a flooring change might be relevant. There's no reason to do anything about the ceiling.