Easy Steps Of Leveling A Wood Frame House On Blocks
Wood frame pier, as well as beam houses, provide a suitable & appropriate crawl space underneath the structure of the house. Crawl space is especially useful when it comes to dealing with water damage, termites, and other nuisances that lie beneath the ground and are difficult to access in structures having a concrete slab foundation. The only drawback of pier and beam houses is that with the passage of time footings may settle and wooden beams may sag, which as a result causes the house to no longer be level. Leveling a house using blocks is adequate in order to scare the most adventurous of do-it-yourself experts. Only try to level a wood frame house on blocks if you have the necessary tools, help, as well as experience.
- Hire a structural engineer in order to examine the extent of the damage to your foundation. You don't want to crawl underneath a house with footings that are almost and not-quite collapse or beams that won't resist the stress of raising the structure.
- Crawl underneath the house and position a spirit level on the beams of the foundation. If the bubble is not in the middle of the level, then in that case the structure needs leveling.
- Now, examine the condition of the wooden floors as well as beams. In some cases, the foundation may be level, however, the wooden floor or beams are warped, which as a result cause the house to appear off level. Replace any wood elements that are suffering from decay or warped.
- Run a line outside the house before marking the low spots in the foundation. Position heavy-duty floor jacks underneath the low spots. Give an assignment to a person to each jack and lift the jacks slowly and at the same time as long as the spirit-level shows the house is level.
- Calculate the new height betwixt the ground and the beam created by the heavy-duty jacks. Build new piers out of blocks and put them down next to the jacked-up low spots. The size of the blocks will be entirely dependent on the height of the pier as well as the weight it must hold. Use 8- by 8-inch concrete blocks when it comes to shorter piers and 12- by 12-inch concrete blocks for taller piers.
- Finally, you need to take down the jacks at the same time and pull them out from underneath the beams. Now, your wood frame house is level on blocks.