Sloping Floors
My floors all slope (not sag) toward the wall running through the center of the house separating the hallways and stairwells from the main rooms. The slope is progressively more severe the higher the floor (the 3rd story floors being the most severely sloped). Does anyone know of a feasible way to level the floors…
My floors all slope (not sag) toward the wall running through the center of the house separating the hallways and stairwells from the main rooms. The slope is progressively more severe the higher the floor (the 3rd story floors being the most severely sloped). Does anyone know of a feasible way to level the floors (or at least partially level the floors), or is this something I will just have to live with? I am hoping to level/plumb everything, especially so that my pocket doors line up properly with their moldings, etc.
Thanks.
We also have a similar problem with a sag dipping down towards the middle of the floor. Since the Brownstone was built in the early 1800’s and I notice very few plaster cracks, all of which seem to be recurring on a select few walls over the years, I am not worried. the biggest problem is identifying the best way to level furniture. Anyone here have any good fairly innocuous methods of furniture leveling they’d like to share? Note, some thin-legged furniture just isn’t conducive to shims.
We have the same problem. Our engineer told us it is from the settling over the years of the wooden supports in the center of the house. The outer walls are brick so they have not moved. He said the only way to level it is to relay the flooring with supports of varying heights to make it plumb. We decided it wasn’t worth the expense and that the slant was part of the charm of the house.
Plaster would be cracked already if this is the case. It would have those spider cracks in most problem areas ( where the biggest pressure goes ).
I am not an engineer, but I’ve seen something like that. It means that you would need to replaster anyway.
I have just put load-bearing beams in my house where I took out a wall that was load bearing. It sounds to me that somewhere along the line a wall was taken out of your house on the first or second floor that should never have come out. Or the wall is there, but rotted or got termites and no longer supports the beams.
The best thing to do is get an engineer to see what is going on. The engineer will start in your cellar and see where your columns are in along the main girder that holds up your house. Is it possible that one of these columns is gone? or the girder rotted?
The next step is to go one floor up, your ground floor and see what walls correspond to these columns There should be walls from the front to back of the house that are within a foot or two of the columns below running front to back. If something is missing, your problem starts here. Perhaps on the Parlor floor above another wall might be missing. Usually the floor will sag like this in the middle if things are missing where they should be. I don’t know if you can safely “jack-up” the floors from the cellar and work your way up. You will probably crack plaster, but i am not sure. Get an engineer and see how you can fix the problem. I am sure you can. Email me if you want more help. I have a good engineer.
Tom
If you want to keep the floors, it’s a big big job. If you want new floors, it’s just big. Probably not worth the trouble.