Folx, It is an A-frame, around 60Y. 2 floors, no basement/crawl space. Side bonus - ground level always cool ! :) Ground level is poured concrete floor/cinder blocks, the rest is wood. Have a sagging floor on 2nd floor, may be 2" sag over 12' run. Nuisance & eye-sore & creaks galore. Traced it to sagging support beam on the ground floor. Started process of gradually leveling it with jack posts, in preparation for replacing it. I have a support beam that is a[B] staggered[/B] (!) sandwich of 5 of [B]nailed [/B]8x2, runs the length of the house. The boards are may be 14' long, for total span of may be 24', supported in the middle, so no wonder it started sagging. Literally, the sagging section has only 2 (!) of continuous 8x2 supporting it. 1/2 of the house is nice and level, seems to be that way because in addition to the beam, that section also has a load-bearing wall (not sure if they designed it to be load-bearing, or it just came out that way as they went about walling up the ground floor). Plan calls for leveling the sagging section. Then I'd place 4 of 9 1/2 LVL x 14' on the floor under the old beam and build supporting walls 2' on both sides of the beam (new LVL boards have to be pre-placed there first, otherwise I wont be able to get them in :) . I'd then replace the existing load-bearing jacks (badly rusted) with news ones, of higher rating. Remove the leveling jacks and [B]cut out the sagging beam section[/B]. Install the new beam, one board at a time. One end would fit into the existing cutout in the cinder block wall (shims). The other end I'd support with a new jack post. Drill through and sandwich with 1/2 threaded rod, every foot or so. [B] In the end state, instead of one long and crooked and weak support beam, I'd have 2 sections, each spanning about 12' - one of old 5 of 8x2 and another one of 4x 9 1/2x2 LVL.[/B] Each would be supported on one end by sitting inside of the pre-existingcut/notch inside of th e cinder block wall and on the other end, 16,000# jack posts ( 1/2" steel plates on top/bottom). How does this sound ? I am a handy type, but havent done heavy structural work like this before and wanted to bounce it off the collective. Any gotchas to be aware of ?

Hello Im updating a 1973 home. My local city uses 2012 residential building codes. Im building some new interior walls. Im using non PT 2x4's for bottom plates. I walked thru a new home construction this afternoon, and I noticed all the walls, interior and exterior have PT bottom plates. Is this code per the code book, or are these builders just going over and beyond the code. Also all the wall bottom plates in this 1973 home are NON PT. Just trying to understand the codes. Thanks for any knowledge on this subject.