sagging support beams???
hi, we bought our frame house in park slope 4 years ago and since then we have noticed the floor has a slant to it. we called an engineer and now know that one of the wooden support beams has to to re replaced with steel. Who do I even call first to get this…
hi,
we bought our frame house in park slope 4 years ago and since then we have noticed the floor has a slant to it. we called an engineer and now know that one of the wooden support beams has to to re replaced with steel. Who do I even call first to get this sort of job done? Also someone told me the house might have to be “jacked up” – I can just imagine the cost…
any help would be greatly appreciated
I am considering buying a 4 floor brownstone in a “looted” condition. It has this same problem: the top 2 floors have a slight dip towards the middle. The inspector checked over the beams and they are in a pretty good condition, but because there have been new bathrooms/tubs installed in the middle of the house the weight over time has sagged the floors. He said it’s not a big deal to jack up the floors, starting at the lowest level. The house needs a total rehab, so I’m not concerned about ripping through floors/ceilings. As many of you seem to have done this, what is a ballpark cost for this? Are we talking less than $10K per floor or more? Just any rough guesstimate is appreciated!!!
I found this
Eagle Contractors‎
544 39th St, Brooklyn, NY
(718) 686-1100
on Google Maps
let us know how much.
5:44 was it expensive?
Thanks so much to all of your advice
5:44 – do you have a # for Eagle? They aren’t popping up in google….
thanks!
We had an issue due to water damage. The beams had rotted and had to be replaced. We used Eagle Construction on 39th Street in Sunset Park. They put in new beams, and a steel beam plus lally columns. The workers did a very good job.
Donatella who often posts helpful comments here, always says don’t freak out, replacing beams and fixing sags is not as terrible as it sounds. She had to do it throughout her house.
We ourselves have sagging floors due to how the house was designed, not specific damage. We’ll open things up and fix it and replace or reinforce some beams someday but it’s not dire according to any engineer, so we’re living with it for another 5 years. We couldn’t and wouldn’t put too much money into a huge renovation all at once. It’ll mean taking out furniture and all that when the time comes, but it’s a good excuse to get out of Dodge, rent a house out of town for a month or two one Summer.
Obviously you’ll need to replace the rotting beam. Steel might be overkill. Maybe you could get a second engineer’s opinion on that? Lally columns on concrete is a must. Jacking up the house levels the beam in the basement. And that’s a good thing, of course. But if the sags on every floor are annoying you, the only way to level that is take up all the flooring and level the joists. Then your molding,doors and ceiling will look off. So, unless you want a huge project (We’ve been there and done that on 2 homes now…no fun), do the basement and walk around upstairs with your head tilted to one side.
Your engineer that you’ve hired should help to obtain bids for the repair work as well as complete the DoB filing and technical signoffs for you. This shouldn’t be too much trouble, it’s a relatively routine problem and the structural solution can be / might be straightforward.
sorry! – I realized I posted my question twice. Actually, the floors are sloping on all 4 levels. (It’s a slight slope – nothing too dramatic, we noticed the slope when we purchased the house 4 years ago, but have noticed the sloping has gotten a bit worse in the past year) – I realize in the basement, we have 1 vertical steel beam at the back of the house which is fine and the horizontal wood beams are all fine as well. There’s just this one rotting wood beam towards the middle of the house that is the one I suspect needs to be replaced.