Hi all, For my first post here I hope I can describe this situation well enough. The basic question is about the best strategy for jacking-up a low spot in my floor We're putting new engineered hardwood flooring throughout the 1st floor of our 15 yr old 2 story house with a crawl space. After removing the carpet from the dining room, where we'll start laying the floor, I discovered a "break" in the floor. i.e. a point where the floor abruptly starts to drop. In the 4 ft from that point to the wall it drops as much as 1.5 in. This is in the East direction. In the N-S direction the floor is level. And West from that point the floor is level. My spirits really sank at this discovery. After I recovered I continued investigating. Continuing in the E direction from the dining room thru a doorway is a short ~4 ft hall leading to a 3.5 ft wide N-S hall running most of the width of the house. Continuing thru the doorway, removing carpet as I went, to the opposite wall of the hall the floor is pretty level although ~1.5 in below the level of the dining room. Also from about 15 ft north of this point along the hall the level drops about 1 in. So now into the crawl space I find a beam in the N-S direction right under the break in the dining room floor. The main ~50 ft long N-S beam is about 12 ft East. This has 3 evenly spaced concrete block piers. The middle one has some wood "spacers" on top of it and this is about at the low point of the floor I measured. The beam runs under the easterly wall of the hall, also supporting the main N-S 2nd story wall. So, I think I need to add another ~1.5 in. spacer on top of that middle pier and maybe some on top of the other two. But I also have to consider the fact that the floor drops 1.5 inches in the first 4 feet but then doesn't drop much more 'till I reach the main N-S beam. What will happen to that when I raise the floor at the main beam? Do I use some kind of screw jack to raise the floor to put in the spacers? How fast can I raise this 1.5 in? The new 5/16" flooring will run N-S. Can I nail down the flooring before the leveling process has been completed? Thanks very much for the help, Jim Greetham

Currently demoing our basement with intent to aggressively update the home's infrastructure - plumbing, electrical, even duct work to be redone as long as we've got the access in the basement. So the other day I found this little beauty: [IMG]http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-FSlaF3-nSOQ/Tjs16ga5odI/AAAAAAAAAVg/cNDnKOqrMGU/s720/IMG_0106.JPG[/IMG] At first it didn't register - so you can imagine my horror when I found THIS: [IMG]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-j3eIwDgfYUo/Tjs17usp0aI/AAAAAAAAAVw/3oEM8bDYimc/s720/IMG_0110.JPG[/IMG] Not only did they vertically notch the triple laminate beam (2x10s), they also bored a hole through it's center. (Never mind that they COULD have run the electric through a non-load-bearing wall not 1 foot further down the beam... So - question - IS this damage enough to pose a structural risk, and if so, how can I repair it? I was thinking about temporarily supporting the beam on either side of the damage and patching it, but I'm not sure that would carry load as well. Should I just tack in load transfer plates on either side of the beam to reinforce the damaged area? I'd *like* to avoid that because I had planned to build a box around this beam (decorative) and keep it fairly narrow but I want to do what's best for the structure, first and foremost. Thanks in advance!