Sagging floors, slanted wall, cracks in plaster - structural repairs needed?

Hi all, wondering if anyone has experience with homes that go from “charming old house” territory into dangerous/needing structural repair territory. We live on the 3rd floor of a 3 story townhouse and have always noted sagging floors and a slanted wall, to the degree that our window trim has actually separated a ~1 inch from the rest of the wall (presumably over several years/decades). Lately, we’ve noticed more hairline cracks on several walls near our ceilings and above door frames. When we first had the house inspected before purchase the inspector noted prior termite damage on our main cellar beam and suggested it might eventually need to be replaced, and we’re wondering if now is the time. I know that it’s not possible to diagnose our specific issue via this forum, but wanted to see if anyone:

1) Had had a similar experience and needed to get structural repairs. Did you need to replace your main beam, or did you go a different route? What did this entail in terms of time, cost, disturbance?
2) Could recommend a good, honest, affordable structural engineer for investigating further, and/or contractor/company who could do these repairs?

Many thanks all,
Evan

evan

in General Discussion 4 years and 4 months ago

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restorationcontractor | 4 years and 3 months ago

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We have used Becker engineering on our projects, they are familiar with older structures.

https://bepc.us/contact-us-2/

evan | 4 years and 3 months ago

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Thanks so much all – have already learned a lot from your posts and related Googling, and I appreciate the time you’ve taken to spell this out for me! As a next step, I’m wondering if anyone has a good contractor/structural engineer they could recommend to diagnose our specific issue? Many thanks again!

cate | 4 years and 3 months ago

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Other possibilities include earth under /behind the house settling due to not enough compaction, being dug up, water, freeze/thaw cycles, etc. Have you had the beam inspected by an exterminator? You could put in a crack monitor of some kind.

hkapstein | 4 years and 3 months ago

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Over years the joists move or sag. The usual solution is to jack up the structure using scewjacks or bottle jacks and then support them at the proper height by reinforcing and shimming existing supports or adding new supports. Generally the support system must terminate at a concrete footing in the cellar floor. However, access to the structure is an obvious problem with finished walls installed, particularly when those walls are lath and plaster. The other issue is whether the sagged joists are cracked or otherwise damaged, and whether they are flexible enough to straighten out to an acceptable degree. If a joist as sagged by 4 inches, you can’t expect to jack it square with the floor, especially not in one day. Usually people will try to jack it up a little by little over a few weeks or months to reduce the floor deflection to a more manageable amount, then adjust the trim or floor if needed to produce an acceptable appearance.

If termites caused the problem, the solution is more or less the same although it may be necessary to replace more of the structural elements, and obviously to treat the termite infestation. But I wouldn’t assume this is what is going on.

Another common culprit is the creation of open floorplans. The joists in a typical brownstone are usually fire cut eastern white pine in empirically chosen widths. While they can make the entire width of the structure, they they may not have been sized to do this in all places, and the builders likely took advantage of partition walls to give extra support. This can be difficult to address if there are no plans to rebuild the origianal wall, but there are options. People often blame the stair header for sagging, but think about the original configuration. A partition wall set on the main beam runs parallel to the stair header all the way to the roof. If you remove that wall, all the weight of 10 joists or so of floor is carried by the two stair trimmer joists. They always use bigger joists for those, but that’s a lot of weight.

restorationcontractor | 4 years and 3 months ago

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Cracking can be normal due to seasonal changes in older houses. I would be concerned about the termite damage was it old or still ongoing? Termites can do alot of unseen damage. I would recommend doing some exploratory work opening up areas that are questionable to check.

stevecym | 4 years and 4 months ago

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I have been in customers homes and seen a lot of this. The joists sag, often around staircase peneteations and all the floors come down an inch or more. Its happening in my own house.

I told a customer what i said above once and advised her to call a pro. An engineere. She did and said he said the same thing i said in a more expensive manner.

I am really not qualified to comment on this but i will suggest this, unless you see a cracked joist i dont think you are in serious danger. All these houses do this and ours did it so long ago that it cracked the arch between our living and dining rooms, forcing it out of round, and one of the previous owners repaired the plaster and it has not gotten worse since.

An engineer is a good choice. Did you have a home inspection done when you bought the home? Perhaps it addressed in there?