House Jacking Help Needed


  #1  
Old 09-25-07, 11:30 PM
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House Jacking Help Needed

I have a house built in 1925 about a 900-1000 sq ft home with attic rooms. Foundation is a combo of patch jobs of footings and existing pier blocks. Problem is one corner of the house is resting on the ground, the other corners are either on a footing or pier blocks. I will have to raise the floor around 12-16" but would love to raise the whole house higher and put in proper footings all the way around.
Right now I need to get the floor leveled with the rest of the house till spring. There is a beam in the middle and everything seems straight on one side of the house and the other side of the beam is angled to that one outer corner. There is a sliding glass door and a large window by the corner as well.
Can anyone help me in getting the house leveled? How I should make a base for the jacks, what beams to use wood or steel I beams, placement of the jacks, etc. The house is around 30x34.
I am not worried about cracking the drywall or windows since I have to replace them anyways, walls will need to be ripped out to install insulation and wiring. The walls have 2x4 studs with 1x6 on both sides. I want to add another 1.5" for more insulation. Also I will need to add deeper floor joist existing joist is 2x6 and the floors are "springy".
One other thing I noticed is the window framing has no headers and the wall framing has no top or bottom plates and will need to be added, they are basically attached to the side of the joist, if I was to use blown insulation it will blow out into the crawlspace. Hope this all makes sense?
Thank You
 
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Old 09-26-07, 04:28 AM
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Wow sounds like a great job to tackle,where are you located if you don`t mind me asking....
bigjax
 
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Old 09-26-07, 09:01 AM
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The house is located in Rathdrum, Idaho. Some people are telling me to demo the house and start over again. But we don't have the money to build a new one and my wife likes this house. Everything inside is structurally sound, just needs to be updated and a new footing put in after I figure out how to raise the foundation. Here is a photo of the house front and back to get an idea of the structure. The floor resting on the ground is where the sliding glass dor is and the side window. Look at the siding shingles where it is buckled. The reason it settled was due to a leak in the main waterline which has all been replaced. Not sure the condition of the wood till I inspect it and I do plan on replacing all the joists with wider boards for more strength and soundness
(old ones are 2x6's).
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Old 09-26-07, 10:10 AM
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Nice pics ,i was just curious, i just recently lifted 60 ft of a 2 1/2 storie home with a porch on one half of the front of it and the other half is a half round wall.The whole front of the home had sunk 3 1/2 inches due to a sinking foundation.Well the home owner told me, before me getting there that he had some guys come in and dig below his foundation (there was never any footing installed )heres what they did.They opened up about a 6ft section beneath the foundation took a steel rod and pounded it down in the soil until that hit solid soil beneath the foundation.Now in some spots he hit bed rock and others he had to go down as much as 6-7ft before hitting good soil, then they would excavate the junk soil out and fill in the area with concrete up to the bottom of the foundation(they had to do this on 3 sides of the front of the home)the back was all sitting on ledge.Then i came into the picture i own 38 house jacks 12-35 ton so we set up lifting points all around the home every 7 ft inside an out and on the corner we had on the inside a triple 2x10 diagonal protruding thru the foundation with jacks under that plus another 24 ton jack on the outside corner that was set on cribbing and placed beneath a piece of railroad tie that we drilled and installed 5/8 threaded rod inand put nuts and washers on them.That was the lifting block for the outside.On the side of the home we were able to go right thru the cellar windows because it was wood and set tight to the bottom of the sill however we did ad a little more wood to be on the safe side.Now his center beam sank 3 1/2 `` also so we had to set up cribbing inside beneath that and i placed one 35 ton jack near his new footing but because of pipes in the way most of the cribbing ended up on soil and it partially started to sink as we put weight on it. So, I put another 35ton jack in between this time we filled in wood behind the pipe and built it up now we had 2 35 ton jacks working and what a nice feeling to see a jack like that pick up a house with very little effort. Of course we took the house up just a little each day sometimes skipped a couple days and then came back to it.When i got there his front door would not open it was stuck in fact, due to the home sinking, when i left there door was working like the day it was installed. Later when the home was up to level again we filled in the gap on top of the foundation with wood even around the curved wall and the rest we had filled in with other masonary materials . All toll we only used around 18 jacks to get the house up but it went up believe me.
big jax
 
  #5  
Old 10-09-07, 10:20 PM
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I went up there and looked under the house, basically the whole house is sitting on the ground with little or no support. The house is about 30x32. The joists are 2x6. There was repairs to the footings on one corner but wasn't deep enough. What I need to do is raise the whole house 16-24".
Can anyone walk me through on how to set up the jacking procedure? I would rather do this myself and am on a very limited budget. Suggestions are great and can email me offline if needed.
Thank You,
Ron
 
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Old 10-09-07, 10:26 PM
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Another thing I forgot to mention, What do I do for the support of the jacks and/or shoring jacks? I am not sure if I need to dig a hole and pour concrete for support of the jacks and later do foundation footings when the house is at proper height?
Thanks again,
Ron
 
 

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