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January 31, 2006
Shaky floors
We live in an 1899 (I think) brownstone and when we walk or when the kids jump around, the room shakes. The bookshelves wobble when the kids dance and the china in the china cabinet rattles when you walk by. Is this normal?
Comments
I had the same problem and we had to have it repaired. My home is an old frame house that had no real work done to it. My problem all tied into the old beams and the spacing between each beam. We lost 5" of room height because our floors were so bad. Good luck.
Posted by: Stacey0768 at January 31, 2006 4:34 PM
Do you mean the floor shakes or the whole house including the foundation and walls? Yours doesn't sound like a frame house (you said brownstone), so I assume it's at least masonry.
If the floor is old (like ours is wideplank pine) some of the boards can be loose and can move quite a bit. That happens to us in our home and can in some cases be resolved by placing a few finishing nails (sometimes after predrilling) through the floor boards into the joists. However, you have to make sure the nail goes through the joist (use galvanized nails that will not stain the wood) and that it is placed at an angle.
Our whole house does shake too, when a truck passes in the nearby street, since some of these Red Hook houses were built on landfill.
Posted by: Yeshwant at February 1, 2006 8:16 AM
The house is a brownstone and its hard to tell what shakes. The windows rattle when a truck goes by but they are old a rattley anyway. Mostly it seems to be the floors but more than just a single lose board. If you jump in the center of the room, the bookshelf against the wall moves. This all became more noticeable when the kids got Dance Dance Revolution for the Xbox.
Posted by: Anonymous at February 1, 2006 10:01 AM
Hi,
What you are describing sounds like joist deflection...That is, the beams that are holding up you floor or ceiling are bending. There are a number of reasons this could be happening, none of them good. It is not un-common in such an old house to have rotted joists; sometimes there are joists that have been compromiosed by being drilled improperly as part shoddy electrical or plumbing work.
In any event you should definatly! have the problem inspected by a licenced stuctural engineer or architect.
Best,
Gideon Gelber -studio-ga
Posted by: Gideon Gelber at February 1, 2006 11:47 AM
Yep, sounds like you need joist work done. Definitely have an expert look at that. You may only need to have the old joists sistered - that is reinforced on both sides with new wood that is bolted to the old. That won't cost too many arms and legs. If your joists are too far gone for that, then you may need to have them replaced, which is far more expensive. This is a structural issue that needs to be taken care of. Don't panic, your house won't fall down tomorrow, but don't put it off idefinitely.
Posted by: CrownHeightsProud at February 2, 2006 2:00 PM
I would like to stress that last point of not panicking. This is very common in brownstones and although it is annoying and disconcerting, the floors are not going to come tumbling down. It should be taken care of eventually, perhaps when you are doing some other work you can have a contractor take a look and see what is going on. My guess is that either there was a supporting wall that was removed at some point in the building's history or that the wall is still there but has compressed and gotten shorter over the years so that the joists bounce down until they get support from the wall.
Posted by: samandjoeshow at February 3, 2006 1:06 AM
I live in Westchester County and switched to Hudson Energy Services, LLC around November 2005. I was prompted by a phone call and was persuaded when hearing about price reductions. A few months later I started getting higher bills which were thoroughly confusing. I'm searching around for consumer guidance. I dropped the ESCO and returned to Con Ed.
Posted by: Pamela at April 13, 2006 10:45 AM
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